It’s Not Just Celtic Minded Pundits Who Are Slamming The Beaton Penalty.

If you look across the city, you will see a familiar thing; their supporters utterly convinced that criticism of the way some of the most blatant decisions go their way is limited to “conspiracy theorist Celtic fans” and other people who they regard as enemies.

But the nature of that decision on Wednesday has so shocked much of Scottish football that it is being debated and discussed far and wide, and even by some outside the game here. For every Chris Sutton pulling it apart there is someone like Steve Conroy, a former official, who says the same.

The decision has its defenders too, of course, but they are few and far between. For every James McFadden, hanging onto his job by making a case for it, there is a Kris Boyd who is no friend of Celtic’s and no enemy of Ibrox, saying that it was a shocker.

Few of course want to dig in deep and look for motives although a few are readily apparent. They would rather put this down to a bad day at the office. Conroy thinks that VAR would have made a difference, and he’s correct because it would have. But whereas he thinks the technology would have made it easier for Beaton to make the right decision I would argue that it would have made it harder for him to make excuses for a blatantly wrong one.

This is where I think the value of the technology lies. If Beaton had watched that three or four times and still made the same call the conversation would be about why Beaton’s interpretation of the rules is so at odds with nearly everyone else’s.

Then people would be looking to motives a little more, instead of trying to argue that black is actually white.

Later on I’m going to do a piece on the number of managers this season who have openly criticised decisions in relation to that club. It’s an odd picture because there are a couple in recent weeks making similar criticisms about decisions against us.

My answer to that hasn’t changed; if people think this is wrong then they should demand changes.

Believe it or, as bad as the Beaton decision was it’s clear that we still haven’t reached a tipping point.

That some are still willing to defend that call and find ways to agree with it proves that. It’s going to take something even more egregious to finally move the needle here, but I think it’s obvious that as this season goes on the desperation of certain people to work towards the goals of a certain club will encourage ever more spectacular decision making.

But that this is a particular shocker is not in dispute except to a very small number of people.

This isn’t just the Sutton’s and Hartson’s saying it, this is nearly unanimous and at the very least that calls John Beaton’s competence into serious question … and the SFA needs to think long and hard before they give this joker another game involving our club or theirs.