Luke McCowan ready to play his part in another successful Celtic cup run

Luke McCowan is determined to make his mark on the Scottish Cup after being restricted to a watching brief during Celtic’s successful League Cup campaign.

The 27-year-old was cup-tied as Celtic went all the way to the final where they beat Rangers on penalties.

The former Dundee midfielder is still waiting for the first winners’ medal of his Celtic career and is eager to take another step when the holders host Kilmarnock in the fourth round on Saturday evening.

McCowan is also looking to get back to winning ways after Celtic were held to a 3-3 draw by his former team at Dens Park on Wednesday.

“You don’t want nights like that, but it’s how you react on Saturday,” he said.

“I don’t need to worry about being cup-tied or anything. It’s a positive, I’m looking forward to it. Hopefully I’ll feature in it and get to play minutes.

“But it makes you hungry to do well in the other cup because I didn’t get to play in the last one. So I’m looking forward to it.

“Again, you just need to go and make sure that your reaction is good now. That’ll be a whole team, as a collective, to do that.”

The evening looked to be going to plan when McCowan headed a fifth-minute opener on his first return to Dens Park since his move on the final day of the summer transfer window.

He reacted with muted celebrations and there was no evidence of any booing at all for the ex-Dundee skipper throughout the night.

“I was never going to celebrate if I was going to score,” McCowan said.

“You don’t think that during the game, it just kind of comes to you as it happens.

“I was at Dundee for four years so I was never going to run away in the corner and celebrate.

“I wanted to be respectful in that way because they were good to me. I was never going to run away with the arms up.

“Was there pressure going back? Playing for this club, you get the pressure in every single game.

“It was different. You’re on the opposite side of the pitch, warming up and stuff like that, just wee things like that.

“It wasn’t much I thought about, it was just seeing old faces, which was nice. You’re here to play a football match, I had to go and do that. That was my mindset going there.”