The Media Is Pulling Apart (Almost) Every Decision In The Weekend’s Celtic Game.

If you’ve been following the press today you won’t have missed that they are pulling apart almost every decision from the Motherwell game, looking for a point of controversy. Funny that two incidents are getting almost no mention at all.

The first is the clear handball by a Motherwell play just a second before the one everyone in the media is highlighting involving Bolingoli.

Now our defender handles the ball, there is no question about that whatsoever, but it amazes me that amidst the analysis of that incident that nobody has spotted – or wants to acknowledge more like – the one preceding it.

Watching the BBC highlights was especially hilarious. They actually slowed the incident right down, circled our player and zoomed in so that the slow-motion replay wouldn’t catch the Motherwell player doing the exact same thing.

I find that quite incredible. Both incidents are as clear as a bell but one – and only one – is being picked up by the press, and the thing is, of course, that if the first is a foul then the second one isn’t a penalty at all because it’s a free kick to Celtic.

Almost as obvious was the tackle by Bevis Mugabi on David Turnbull – which didn’t even draw a card as incredible as that is – and which you can watch here and which nobody whatsoever appears to want to discuss.

But the BBC – who I’ll be talking about later – did want to talk about an alleged foul by Kyogo in the lead-up to our goal, and now some of the press have highlighted this incident as well. I just find it absolutely incredible what they choose to care about and not.

The narrative around this now is that we’ve somehow lucked out this weekend; the Motherwell manager thinks that the penalty decision would have “changed the game.” It would have had to, their team – the home team remember – hadn’t had a shot on target up until that point and we were 2-0 to the good with plenty left in the tank.

We strolled that match at the weekend. Strolled it.

But the press is trying to paint a picture of a game in which we’d have struggled had the ref been up to par; as I said yesterday, if anyone wants to do something about bad refereeing and our lamentable standards the Celtic fans will be all for it.

What we won’t support, or accept, is one sided scrutiny from a media too gutless to look at other decisions elsewhere and is all too comfortable highlighting the ones we get.