Today’s decision, by the SFA, to deny Celtic’s appeal against the Dedryck Boyata red card is both absolutely ridiculous and yet wholly expected at the same time.
We never get any explanation for these decisions but today we don’t really need any, as the Celtic manager spoke the words for the prosecution himself, and pretty conclusively, both after the game and all the way up to today’s hearing by accusing his own player of making a mistake in going for the ball in a sliding tackle rather than staying on his feet.
Of course, in the aftermath of the game he had initially gone further than that, in saying he agreed with the decision and the red card, and this after he said he’d reviewed the incident for himself.
This astonishing example of throwing the player under the bus with a public criticism that was unjustified and who’s central tenant the manager now admits was wrong conspired to make the appeal an uphill battle at best.
What makes today’s decision all the more ridiculous is that had Ronny Deila stuck to his guns in the first place and not wasted the club’s time on the appeal Boyata would have missed last night’s home game, which as it happens was played against a Dundee side resting key players in anticipation of their weekend Scottish Cup tie.
Instead, Boyata will now be missing for the far trickier away match at Thistle, who’s league position (they are 7th whereas Dundee are 5th) belies the fact they’ve played two games less than Dundee and St Johnstone and three less Ross County, who sit in 4th but only 5 points better off.
In short, this is a team chasing a European spot (they get it in fourth place if Celtic win the cup) and who have a good chance of getting it and therefore will be going all-out against us instead of sitting back.
We beat them 2-0 the last time we visited Maryhill, but they came to Celtic Park in January and managed to leave having lost by a single Leigh Griffiths goal.
Their manager knows how we set up (everyone does by now) and you wouldn’t be terribly shocked if they got something from the match, considering how we’re playing at the moment.
So what will our central defensive partnership for that game be?
Will Simunovic be fit, and if not 100% will he be rushed back for the game? Or will we go with the “tried and tested” (to destruction most of the time) Efe Ambrose?
These are the decisions a lack of forward thinking forces us to embrace.
The ultimate irony, of course, is that it wasn’t even a necessary choice.
When you watch the replay, Boyata clearly wins the ball. The sending off is a disgrace, and iwhilst I wouldn’t exactly have fancied our chances of getting it rescinded (we’re not Sevco after all) it would at least have been worth a shot in the hope we got fairness on the day.
But this was an open goal for anyone who fancied giving us a kick.
We had no chance at all in this case.
That we had to go into that hearing so hamstrung and without a prayer of success is a joke. That we even bothered when the manager’s statements after the game made it unwinnable is ridiculous and that the decision to do so cost us a key player for a crucial match … well that simply makes worse a mess we ought never to have gotten ourselves into in the first place.
It’s this lack of thinking more than one step ahead that really frustrates a lot of Celtic fans.