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Ofcom’s Decision On Sky Makes Them As Toothless And Weak As The SFA. Celtic Must Respond Forcefully.

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So Sky smears Celtic and gets away with it.

At the time of writing, the club is still co-operating with them, and Ofcom has said that because the relevant section of the interview with Morelos wasn’t broadcast on their channel but was only available on their website and On Demand services that an official investigation is not warranted.

Will we ever get the answers? Not if the club takes this lying down.

We made a major tactical blunder when we decided to speak to the broadcaster for the Aberdeen game. We should have maintained our tough stance until Ofcom had responded, and we should continue to maintain it until we have full disclosure.

Sky has escaped an investigation on a technicality. They have not been “cleared” some outlets will have been steered to suggest.

They have escaped because Ofcom is as toothless as the SFA when it comes to holding the powerful to account. It’s not a failure of governance as much as it’s a failure to govern at all.

The Daily Record’s headline, saying our case was “thrown out” is another gross misrepresentation.

Ofcom knows the interview was confected.

They are saying that they just can’t do anything about it.

The Record has deliberately gilded the lily. Why shouldn’t they? Who are we going to complain to? IPSO is just as pathetic in dealing with these issues … they’d force an apology on page 11 where no-one could find it except with a magnifying glass.

It comes down to the same thing it always did; Celtic putting its faith in the so-called governing bodies instead of taking action on its own. Our club should have banned Sky and cut off all co-operation with them until we had the answers we want.

Let’s be clear on how serious this is. Someone inside Sky or working alongside them deliberately set out to harm our club and its reputation by doctoring a translation … it was a smear job, pure and simple. And the people who did that might still be working there or available to Sky in the future.

How can we have any faith in the broadcaster whilst their impartiality remains under such a dark cloud?

Why are we pretending that this can be fixed without action?

Celtic needs to make a strong statement tonight detailing what action we are taking next.

That action must be robust.

Lawwell’s initial statement appeared to show us as deeply angry over this, enough so that we were willing to take it as far as we could. A paltry suspension from two press conferences is not going to get it done. It will look weak, and it will encourage other outlets to spread more lies about us in the future.

We cannot allow this.

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