RYAN Porteous admits he should have done better for the goal that sent Celtic on their way to victory on Sunday – but insists Hibernian will continue to be “brave” on the ball.
With the game deadlocked at 0-0, Porteous coughed up possession under pressure from Odsonne Edouard, who played in Jeremie Fringpong for the opener six minutes from half-time.
A slack pass from Scott Allan was the Easter Road side’s undoing in the second half when Edouard added the second in the Scottish champions’ comfortable 2-0 victory.
Winger Martin Boyle confessed Jack Ross’s men played into Celtic’s hands but Porteous believes it was a failure in execution, not tactics.
He said: “For the first goal, it comes to me and I probably shouldn’t have let him turn and then it gets caught in my feet.
READ MORE: Celtic midfielder Callum McGregor ready for Hearts tussle
“I maybe should have just hooked it away. It’s not the way I like to defend or the team likes to defend going to places [like Celtic]. It should be no-nonsense at times.
“But you’ve got to be brave on the ball at times and take responsibility, and I think the whole defence did that throughout the whole game.
“We tried to play. It never worked but we’ve got to learn from it.”
The loss was the second since Ross took the reins six games ago and Hibs have another huge task ahead as they prepare to host on-form Rangers on Friday night.
Porteous insists it could prove the perfect match to bounce back, but only if they perform to a higher standard.
He added: “We’ll go into that game and take real positives from that and hopefully get the win. “It doesn’t matter who you’re playing in the league, you want to play on the front foot, score goals and keep clean sheets – and, ultimately, we never did that [on Sunday].”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here