History beckons for Celtic and Rodgers after beating Rangers to reach final

Brendan Rodgers says Celtic are "one game away from a real historic season" after reaching the Scottish Cup final.

A Callum McGregor strike and Scott Sinclair's penalty were enough to beat Rangers and book Celtic a place in May's final against Aberdeen.

With the Premiership and League Cup already secured, Rodgers' side could win the club's first treble since 2001.

"That'll be a really good final," said Rodgers, whose side beat Aberdeen in November's League Cup final.

"I'm sure if we can play as well as we did in the League Cup final, or like we did today, it could be a great day for us, but there's a lot of work to do between now and then.

"We're playing against a very, very good team with an outstanding manager in Derek McInnes. He's done an outstanding job and we've always had difficult games against them.

"But we prepare ourselves to win, we don't think about losing and being too disappointed with that, our plan is to win games and we find ways to do that.

"We're one game away from a real historic season, but we've still got a few games to play before that.

"[Facing Rangers in the Premiership] Ibrox [on Saturday] is another big game for us. But we enjoyed our last visit there, should be a good atmosphere and if we can play like today then I'll be really happy."

Dembele injury concern

Leigh Griffiths won Celtic's second-half penalty after replacing Moussa Dembele in the opening period.

"We'll get Moussa scanned; it looks like a hamstring injury," said Rodgers.

Dembele has scored 32 goals this season

"But we had the ideal guy to come on, someone who is always a threat, gets his shots on target - from 25 metres out there's not many better - he looks like he'll score in every game he plays, and he made a great run in our counter-attack that led to our penalty.

"In general we were outstanding. We deservedly went one-nil up, had other opportunities, restricted Rangers to very few efforts.

"Young Callum was brilliant, really, really good and technically gifted and it was a wonderful goal he scored."

A year ago at Hampden, Rangers beat Celtic on penalties at the semi-final stage of the Scottish Cup and Rodgers commented: "The Rangers game is a huge, big-pressure game, and how the players coped with that and the quality they showed was outstanding.

"I'm delighted for them because it was a difficult one for them here 12 months ago, and the aftermath of that, but they've really showed in many big games this season, today included, how they've been improving and how they're working well."

Sinclair's converted spot-kick took his season's tally to 24.

And he told BBC Scotland: "Everyone's delighted, it's one of the best team performances we've had all season.

"Before the game, we said to ourselves if we set out the first 10 minutes at 100%, keep the ball and create chances, there's no doubt we'll win the game.

"You guys always talk about [the treble], but we've got to keep doing what we've been doing, take it every game as it comes, and hopefully we can carry it right on until the end of the season."