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The Media Is Taking Brendan’s Comments On Sunday’s Game Completely Out Of Context.

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As per usual, the media is stirring the soup.

Sunday’s cup semi final between Motherwell and Sevco degenerated to the level of a brawl a couple of times. In the aftermath, everyone was talking about the referee.

I personally thought he had a shocker, although those screaming for a red card for Ryan Bowman are at it.

There were some hard tackles in the game, for sure, but when Sevco released their deranged statement last night, which accused the official of singling out their players, you could hear howling at the moon.

Bowman was the first player in the book during the match, within minutes of the kick-off. Sevco players spent the rest of the game shrieking at every incident involving him. His 50-50 tackle on Morelos was judged just right; the ref got it spot on in spite of the wailing from Caixinha and his bench.

There were other moments where the ref was blatantly wrong, like his failure to book Morelos until late, and his decision to play on not once but twice when there were head injuries was absolutely astonishing, and deserving of his demotion.

But both sides were giving it out during the match, which makes Sevco’s bleating about it all the more ridiculous. And Brendan did not single Motherwell out when he was talking about this; he actually made it clear that both sides were to blame.

The press, of course, is trying to turn this into an attack on the Fir Park club and their style; this odd strategy, wherein he has our manager taking the side of Sevco, has multiple aims. They want to strengthen the argument that somehow the Ibrox club was rough-housed out of the competition. They want to inject some needle into the cup final itself and they want to seek to pressure refs into giving more protection to Sevco’s beleaguered squad.

All of this ignores the fact that Brendan called for protection for some of our own players earlier in the campaign, but in a manner that was less hysterical. And he got zero media support for it at the time. As he pointed out, Bowman was the same player who took out Tierney. He also mentioned the thuggish ex-Aberdeen striker Jayden Stockley … a guy very few in the press pulled up for his diabolical behaviour, for which he didn’t even apologise.

It’s pretty clear that Brendan was not attacking Motherwell.

It’s equally clear that he was not backing Pedro Caixinha and Sevco.

He was, in fact, going over stuff he’s already said and which the media ignored at the time. Refereeing in Scotland is diabolical. It has degenerated to the level whereby elbows being thrown isn’t a big deal; Carlos Pena, who’s two goals against St Johnstone doomed the Perth club to defeat just last week, ought not to have been on the park after he threw a couple in the previous games … but there he was, having been cleared by the compliance officer.

I wrote here recently about the new culture of disrespect for the rules which is taking root in Scottish football; it was the all-too predictable consequence of the SFA ignoring calls for a review and of clubs supporting that. It was the easy to foresee result of a review board which is cowardly and inept and afraid to challenge a certain club.

Brendan knows all this, and when he spoke about “1980’s style tackles” he did not limit his comments to a single game, far less to a single team. No club in the country has been on the receiving end of rougher treatment than Celtic and our manager has been singing this tune or a variation of it all season long.

Now, finally, people are listening … but still managing to twist what he says.

And to think all it took was some bleating from Ibrox.

Some things never change.

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