The news last month that “Brother” Bobby Madden is to depart Scottish football came as a big surprise.
That he was leaving for the lower reaches of England is less shocking; the idea that this guy was ever going to scale greater heights than these is just plain daft.
Madden is a joke of a ref. Unfortunately, he was one joke amongst many and a lot of his predecessors remain with us, posing a threat to our club’s future success.
With everything that is happening over the cinch deal, the need for real refereeing reforms remains as potent as ever. The league and the SFA have shown they will bend the knee to Ibrox on most anything. That’s a problem for the rest of us.
But it’s a problem no-one seems in any great hurry to tackle.
As such, the hallowed title of Worst Ref in Scotland will be up for grabs with Madden’s departure. Celtic fans would have been more pleased had he took John Beaton with him, but I suspect even the English lower leagues would balk at taking on someone like him.
Madden was not the worst of them – Beaton beats him hands down there – but his own reputation was pretty stinking.
We’ve seen some truly abysmal officials here down through the years and although he’s not in the same league as some of those of yesteryear (not by any stretch of the imagination) he’s consistently given decisions against us and for a certain other club which defy logic. Nobody from Celtic will miss him.
But the entire system of refereeing here should be upended with his departure. He and what’s left of his ilk should represent the last gasp of an old established order … that Celtic and others have refused to deliver a killing blow to it is ridiculous.
These people can’t even do VAR right.
The idea that we’ll have a scaled down version of it with less cameras than they use in England … the excuses just write themselves don’t they? Soon, you wait and see, the discourse will be dominated by talk of on-pitch “blind spots” where Morelos and others can throw elbows and kicks without getting caught.
And the game will accept that. One bad apple has been removed from the barrel.
That’s all this is.
The whole damn lot of them ought to have been chucked out into the bin.
Until the system changes, we should continue to be wary.
Whoever takes Madden’s place will need to be watched, just like the rest of them.
Have you read our article on what Celtic needs in this window? Do it here.
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Worse than that still to come. VAR role out is a disaster, it will also run in the background prior to launch. I am sure it will be used against Celtic.
I saw a headline when this news was first announced that he’d be a loss to Celtic and Sevco, and i can only assume the writer was either clueless or at the wind up!
He was probably the most obvious biased in favour of the Ibrox club referee I’ve seen in recent years; he almost had a complete mental breakdown on the pitch when ‘refereeing’ a game between Dundee & Sevco last season when Dundee took the lead and sevco went through the first 40 odd minutes without troubling the Dens keeper, due to his efforts to stifle Dundee and help sevco!
Good riddance, and that weasel Beaton will no doubt take his place now as the ibrox clubs main refereeing cheerleader!
All of this continues because the biggest club in Scotland sit on its arse and does and says nothing.. I would happily crowdfund a legal case against everyone involved in oldco going down the pan. Every football fan in the country was a victim of fraud because the SFA ran a rigged game. Unfortunately Celtic fc are up to their tits in all of it !
Our var cameras will be on the half way line, and it all depends on who’s feeding the info back, if they are set up in Larkhall.
There are unwritten qualifications in becoming a ‘top’ Scots Ref.
Madden has went to engurland to work his way up from where he’ll start, I cannot think why else he’d move?
I’m glad he’s gone, he’s as bitter as he is bald, currant through n through, partially sighted when it suits him. FQ him.
Good riddance and don’t haste to return, the intelligent half of Glasgow won’t miss you one iota.
Biased Refereeing in this country won’t change,no clubs board, especially ours has the balls to fight it,,,,
Madden was a problem, yes. But the guy who replaces him will be a bigger problem.
The refereeing in the SPL never changers.
Who was the ref that phoned sevco to apologise ? That should have triggered an investigation all on it’s own !!!
I’d love to see a balanced end of season review of debatable refereeing decisions that affected matches involving Celtic and those bastards.
What can happen, and it did happen last season, is that there will be a spate of decisions going Celtic’s way and that then sets the tone of the conversation.
We can’t rely on stats. Celtic conceded one less penalty than the Ibrox club last season. Celtic were also awarded the same number of penalties as the Ibrox bastards. Cards against? Celtic were top of the Fair Play League by a considerable margin so you can’t even go down that route.
Celtic fans love to moan about dodgy refs but the stats don’t bear it out. Well they certainly didn’t last season. The “penalty to Rangers” meme, based on stats, does not stand up to that level of scrutiny.
I am only playing Devil’s Advocate here. I have seen it with my own eyes. However, the argument against refs has to be more detailed and nuanced than “it has to be true coz James aff The Celtic Blog” keeps writing about it”.
If you want something done about it, stop moaning and do some proper homework.
Stats rarely tell a whole story! I noticed that in games where we were coasting, refs like Madden and Beaton would try to appear impartial, but in tight games their true colours would shine and they’d pull all the dirty tricks to assist sevco.
Madden was visibly rattled in a game between Dundee and sevco too, when Dundee took an early lead and sevco were struggling to trouble them; the lengths Madden went to to assist the sevvies was blatant cheating in favour of the Ibrox club, booking Dundee players for nothing challenges, awarding sevco freekicks for nothing, and eventually awarding sevco a nonsense penalty, which they missed, and you could see the colour drain from Maddens face when they missed it…sevco eventually won the game, and Madden looked more relieved than the sevco players.
Like i said, stats don’t tell the true story and can easily be manipulated, especially by those whose performances your basing your statistical analysis on! …try paying closer attention to games, particularly on the points i mentioned!
The standard of refereeing is so consistently poor,
that I wouldn’t even mind Willie Miller coming out of retirement! 🙂