Celtic Must Beware. With Madden Leaving The Worst Ref In Scotland Crown Is Up For Grabs.
Football - Aberdeen v St Johnstone - Scottish League Cup Semi-Final - Tynecastle, Edinburgh, Scotland - 1/2/14 Referee Bobby Madden Mandatory Credit: Action Images / Graham Stuart Livepic EDITORIAL USE ONLY. No use with unauthorized audio, video, data, fixture lists, club/league logos or live services. Online in-match use limited to 45 images, no video emulation. No use in betting, games or single club/league/player publications. Please contact your account representative for further details.
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.
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