The Hypocrisy Of The Media And Ibrox Sites Defending The “Integrity” Of Referees.

For months now, the media and the Ibrox fan-sites have been howling at the moon.

For months they have been criticising every decision that Celtic get.

Go over to the febrile forums of the Follow Followers and see for yourself how outrageous it is; on Saturday night there was one thread asking whether or not they should protest Hampden and their own club over the “conspiracy” which had won us three points earlier in the day by sending off a Ross County player when his team were already 3-0 down.

This lot live in their own fantasy world.

For the same length of time, the Celtic fans have never wavered in their central view that refereeing in Scotland is a joke. Decisions might have gone our way, but we weren’t praising referees or suggesting that they had made the right calls in every instance.

What we were doing was suggesting that the media scrutinises only what it wants to, and we criticised their selectivity. At no point did we go to the bat in favour of the Hampden whistlers, because their general performances have been atrocious.

But fast-forward to this weekend and the way that Madden has come under deserved scrutiny for that disgraceful penalty award at Dundee, and suddenly we’re the ones “putting pressure on officials” in the run-up to the next game.

You have to live inside quite the little bubble not to smell the fetid reek of hypocrisy from these Peepul. They have spent the last few months indulging in every kind of paranoid fantasy and the media has been with them all the way. Now, because Chris Sutton has criticised the whistlers for the second week in a row – deservedly – suddenly it’s wrong?

The Celtic fans have long held to the view that the only thing you can say about Scottish refereeing standards are that we appear not to have standards. Referees are treated as a protected species and that is wrong, and it creates the breeding ground in which various kind of corruption and malfeasance can flourish.

That view does not change just because we got a couple of tight ones in our favour. Indeed, the more controversial the decision is the easier it is for us to defend our view that the entire system needs turning upside down and inside out.

But you cannot spend all these weeks arguing about decisions and then suddenly flip and stand in the corner of the people who have made them and expect your opinion to be taken seriously. As this site has said, many times, if people (or Peepul) want a proper discussion about the standards then let’s have it … and the new technology with it.

One Ibrox fan-site has actually been promoting the lie that Celtic opposes VAR; our statements in support of it go back longer than theirs, but these muppets will bend the truth into any shape they want to suit their agenda and whatever pitiful argument they are making on any given day.

Refereeing stinks in Scotland. It stunk before this weekend.

It stunk before this season kicked off. It stunk last year and the year before that and the year before that and for a long time before. It stunk because refs have been allowed to run their own fiefdom without outside scrutiny for too damned long and you cannot believe they are incompetent – or biased – without wanting to see genuine reform.

And you cannot call them that one day and defend their “integrity” the next.