The Media’s Latest Anti-Celtic Attack Over Refereeing Decisions Is A Desperate Mess.

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.