Oh what a twisted mess the media is getting into at the moment with its latest nonsensical attack on Celtic through the standard of refereeing. The attack this time is twofold; they’ve brought in two former officials to attack Chris Sutton over his lack of understanding of the rules in relation to the goal we had chopped off against Dundee Utd, and they’ve also suggested that Hatate should have red carded in the same game.
So on the one hand they’ve defended Beaton as a ref and on the other they’ve said he got a massive decision absolutely wrong. So which is it? Is this guy a top class pro or an official prone to terrible errors?
Because he can’t be both.
Let’s do this one bit at a time.
For openers, the attack on Sutton is ridiculous if we’re being generous.
Because all he’s done is tell the plain and simple truth; Beaton clearly doesn’t understand the rules he is supposed to enforce. Notice that none of these two refs are saying that Sutton’s interpretation is wrong.
They are simply saying that he lacks the knowledge base that a Grade One official has, and this is a valid argument as far as it goes.
But it doesn’t contradict the basic fact that Beaton did not know the rule in this case. Sutton is correct
. That does, in fact, make Beaton incompetent.
There’s an old, and dark joke, amongst air traffic controllers; you can have a perfect career, but one little mid-air collision and that’s all they remember you for. Referees can get away with mistakes, but blatantly not knowing the rules they are there to implement isn’t something anybody should be making the least excuse for.
Chopping off that goal could have had a material influence on the match.
It is not a minor matter, it was an error which could have been hugely significant and if they don’t think that Beaton deserves to be called out for that then their own judgement is impaired.
As to the Hatate challenge, it’s one of those that had the ref flashed the red there would have been questions asked, and a lot of anger amongst the Celtic support, but the media would have been wholly with it.
Had an Ibrox player made the challenge it would have been ignored. Collum sent a player off for a similar challenge in the Motherwell-Hibs game and allowed another to be punished with a yellow; which decision was right?
The truth is that nobody in the media cared that much, and the hysteria started with the Hatate one primarily because of who we got in the draw.
This endless scrutiny of refs by a media which has never cared would be more interesting and beneficial if it wasn’t all focussed on one club; our club. It is pathetic the lengths they are going to in an effort to pressure officials into being harder on us.
All Celtic fans want is a fair shake for our club.
We have never been interested in bending referees to Celtic’s will. All we want is basic fairness. The press seems brazenly determined to knock the very idea of that on the head. It is them pressuring officials now, not us.
It does show how desperate the media are by getting these two officials, and I use that term loosely, to comment on this.
I wonder how many they asked for a comment before they got to this pair.
Chris Sutton isn’t paid over £800 a match to know the rules but Beaton and Co are.
At the start of each season officials go to clubs to explain rule changes so that everyone knows every they stand.
It is strange then that the referee “forgot” a new rule that he has had to explain to clubs.
I mean, there couldn’t be another reason could there.
I am in my seventies now but did the referees exam when in my Twenties. One of the questions, A ball strikes the attacking player on the hand, he brings it under control and strikes it into the net, how do you restart the game, answer from the centre spot. If this law has been changed then players will need to wear shorts with pockets in them to keep their hands away from the ball.
as we approach the run in we can expect more hysteria from hun media as we are 10 games from a treble
Maybe the bigger issue is our club have came out and said they are happy with the sfa and officials, so until we wake the hell up this will continue.
I would believe a politician before I would believe a journalist.
I was watching and listening to Chris Sutton when the accidental handball happened.
FROM THE EPL NEW RULE
If an attacking player’s accidental handball immediately precedes another player scoring, the goal will now be awarded, when last season it was likely to have been ruled out. However, a player will still be penalised if he commits an accidental handball immediately before scoring himself.3 Aug 2021
IFAB RULE CHANGE from 1 July 2021 Law 12 explained by Liverpool Fans Site. (Clear as mud… my opinion…best go to IFAB site)
Accidental handballs that lead to the immediate creation of goals are no longer to be considered an offense; instead, accidental handballs in the buildup are only an offense if a goal is scored immediately after this contact or a goal is scored with the accidental handball. (Last season, it was also an offense if a chance was created immediately after such accidental contact.)
Deliberate handballs in the buildup will remain an offense, however, so that Roberto Firmino handball in the buildup that everyone often brings up would remain an offense under these new rules.
The major additions to the rule language clarify what it is meant by making the body “unnaturally bigger.” The new language is as follows:
A player is considered to have made their body unnaturally bigger when the position of their hand/arm is not a consequence of, or justifiable by, the player’s body movement for that specific situation. By having their hand/arm in such a position, the player takes a risk of their hand/arm being hit by the ball and being penalised.
This language asks the officials to make their own subjective judgement around what arm positionings appear “valid” or explainable based on their view of the players’ actions — an ask which will likely lead to a lot of VAR handball debates next season (even if this is largely what officials were already being asked to do).
The law no longer specifies that particular positionings are inherently unnatural (i.e. the removed language of “the hand/arm is above/beyond their shoulder level,” which codified specific movements as unnatural by default) or that particular movements are always not an offense (i.e. the removed language specifying that it should not be an offense if “when a player falls and the hand/arm is between the body and the ground to support the body, but not extended laterally or vertically away from the body”). As such, there will likely be more gray areas in handballs that occur in these movements/positionings next season, as more discretion has been given to referees.
Also removed is language describing deflections or contact to the arm when the ball is played from quite nearby, language that was itself a relatively recent addition to the law seeking to account for the fact that it’s often impossible to move one’s arm away from a ball in such close proximity.
The assumption that players cannot always get their arms out of the way is, of course, covered in spirit in the broader move to have the officials judge the “validity” of a player’s arm positioning in every single case, but as it’s not written explicitly it may be that we see more deflection handballs than we have in the past two seasons (though obviously it’s hard to judge before we’ve seen the law in practice).
As always, though, expect handball law changes to be pivotal in the season’s VAR debates, and expect fans and pundits alike to not quite understand the law’s language.