Celtic manager Ange Postecoglou has addressed Carl Starfelt's injury status after his half-time substitution in the 3-0 Scottish Cup victory over Hearts on Saturday afternoon.

With the Hoops 2-0 up at the break, the Sweden international did not reappear for the start of the second half.

Aaron Mooy had struck early on to put the Premiership champions ahead before Kyogo Furuhashi bagged his 26th of the season with a sumptuous flicked finish on the stroke of half-time.

Postecoglou referenced Starfelt's withdrawal in his post-match comments.

He said: "He felt a niggle in his hip flexor during the warm-up actually.

"He felt it early on in the game but we got it through to half-time and we could see he wasn't moving well in the first half. You could see he wasn't his normal self so we made the change. 

"I don't think it's anything significant but it was good to get Yuki [Kobayashi, his replacement] some game-time, you can see his quality for a young man and I thought he did well when he came on."

Winger Daizen Maeda missed out entirely from the matchday squad.

The Japan international was forced off injured against the same opposition on Wednesday evening with Postecoglou subsequently rating his chances of making the cup tie 50-50.

However the Hoops boss confirmed the game just came too soon for the Japan international to recover.

He told BBC Sportsound: "Only Daizen really [is the only enforced change]. He obviously got a knock the other night and tried hard to get back but it was just too close of a turn around."

Celtic Way:

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