Rodgers has no regrets about criticising officials after Celtic loss

Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers has no regrets over his criticism of the match officials following last weekend's defeat by Hearts after being hit with a Scottish Football Association disciplinary charge.

Rodgers faces a hearing on March 28th after being accused of breaching a rule which forbids criticising match officials "in such a way as to indicate bias or incompetence".

The Northern Irishman claimed the "level of incompetence" made him worry for the game as he criticised the displays of referee Don Robertson and video assistant John Beaton in particular, with Yang Hyun-jun's red card and a penalty for handball against Tomoki Iwata the key complaints.

Rodgers risks being banned from the touchline for Celtic's cinch Premiership clash against Rangers on April 7 but, when asked if he had any regrets over his comments, he said: "No, not at all. My job is to defend the team, defend the club and that's what we will do in this case.

"We will defend it vigorously and when the date comes we will go from there. I will sit down with the club and the lawyers and we will look at it from there."

Rodgers added: "It was my observations over many games, primarily around the inconsistency of decisions.

"I never talk so much about referees and haven't done over the course of my career. I understand they make mistakes. But I felt the ones last week were clear, clear errors."

Celtic failed in an appeal over Yang's red card for a high boot on Alex Cochrane, which was upgraded following a VAR review.

Rodgers said: "I have seen incidents worse than that, and I thought the on-field decision was correct, a yellow card.

"We had a report back that the studs and the boot was in the face of the player, which clearly a couple of days later when we