John Hughes Hails Battling Inverness After Win Over Livingston

Inverness manager John Hughes lauded his side's grit and professionalism after grinding out a 2-0 win over Livingston.

The Highlanders progressed to the quarter-finals of the Scottish League Cup thanks to goals from Miles Storey and Daniel Devine.

Hughes' side were far from their fluent best but managed to see off the stubborn challenge of the Championship's bottom club.

Their win could have been more handsome if Storey, Dani Lopez and Andrea Mutombo had not passed up late opportunities but the Caley Thistle boss still took plenty of satisfaction from an untidy triumph.

It was a good professional job, especially in the second half,'' he said.

We got the job done and we are in the hat for the next round.

I keep saying we're not going to be the team we were last season because we've lost too many players.

But we're grinding out results and, even with everything we did last year, that makes it more enjoyable. Sometimes it's not great, but we keep grinding it out.

We saw the game out and we should have scored one or two more goals towards the end.''

Despite succumbing to their fourth consecutive defeat in all competitions, Mark Burchill's Lions did not look like a team at the foot of the second tier, with Gary Glen, Jordyn Sheerin and Morgyn Neill all passing up decent first-half chances.

And, while the Livi boss believes his side matched their Premiership visitors for most of the contest, he was in no mood to accentuate the positives from another painful reverse.

Burchill said: I am devastated to be out of the cup.I have told the players that we cannot get into a situation where we are saying: 'we are playing really well, but losing matches'. That is unacceptable.

This is results-driven football and we have two massive games coming up.''