Is Talking Blatant Anti-Celtic Guff The Price Michael Stewart Paid To Get Back On TV?

Last week, Michael Stewart sat in the BBC Sport Scotland studio and tied himself in knots trying to justify us not getting that penalty kick. He talked absolute rot. It was a stonewall decision, as easy a call as an official should ever have to make. Who said? Numerous officials from Steve Conroy to Dermot Gallagher, who famously suggested that in the EPL it’s a certainty.

I was willing to overlook Stewart’s inane remarks. They were illogical nonsense, but I was willing to look past them. They were a one-off, surely? And even accounting for a little pro-Hearts bias in how he looked at it, you can say “a man can make a mistake.”

Tonight he’s arguing against the penalty we got today. And Kenny Miller, with no pretence of objectivity whatsoever, is looking for holes in the goals we scored, and thinks that the second shouldn’t count. This is BBC Scotland at its best right now, sucking up to Ibrox and giving Celtic the shit end of the stick. There are more ex-Ibrox players working there than from almost any other background, and I include journalism.

Stewart spent a while in purgatory, and when you have to watch cretins like Ricky Foster sitting on the sofa instead of you, I can understand why that might sting a bit. But what a price to have to pay to get back on the telly; lobotomised and your balls kept in a plastic box.

I hope he thinks it was worth it. The rest of us are watching aghast. He has been well and truly brought to heel by his bosses who have their tongues so far up the Ibrox posterior that they can taste toothpaste. These are bad times for anyone who works up there and who cares about doing the job right. They have been hung out to dry.