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Prominent Celtic Site Poses A Deadly Question About The Conduct Of The SFA.

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Alan Morrison, of Celtic By Numbers, is not a guy prone to hyperbole or exaggeration.

He deals in data. In facts.

His site has become a must-read because of those things.

When he introduced an Honest Mistakes section and started to try and tote up whether or not refereeing “errors” actually cost us over the course of a season, a lot of people screamed “conspiracy theory”.

Imagine their shock when his product was balanced, reasoned and fair.

Alan’s is one of those sites where the editor knows the things he doesn’t know, and that’s why his section on Honest Mistakes is required reading. He actually brought in an expert, a former ref, to run the rule over all of the contentious decisions.

Some of us who read him religiously don’t always agree with what the former official says … but that Alan has gone so far to make his site credible tells you a lot about the man he is and the standards he sets.

That is why when he poses a question the likes of which he did today – “Have the SFA lied to Celtic again?” – it is awfully difficult for anyone who might otherwise dismiss a blogger who asks such a thing as a crank (I should know, I get my fair share of that sort of abuse) to do so. Alan is simply too straight and too sensible for that smear to stand.

The Celtic By Numbers site does not post sensationalist content, which is what makes that question all the more sensational and damning. Even worse, for the governing body, is that Alan Morrison seems convinced that we’ve been misled at the very least in terms of what the operator saw and did not see about the offside against Jota.

He lays out the three “options” that the ref on the pitch and the VAR team had. His conclusion, that the image we’ve all seen is so inconclusive that the officials should have simply “did nothing” and given the benefit of the doubt to the attacker is grounded in what’s actually written in the rulebook. It leaves the SFA with nowhere to run.

But it’s his dissection of the SFA statement where the real meat of the article can be found. For a start, he has highlighted the way in which that statement actually misinterprets the offside rule, which is an astonishing “mistake” piled on top of what is already an extraordinary incident and aftermath. Their contention that Jota was offside when he “received the ball” is ridiculous since it only matters where he was when the pass was made.

Everyone who knows anything about the offside rule knows this. It’s burned into our consciousness. There is no ref, anywhere on the planet, who is not fully conversant with this fact. Nor very many football fans.

But somehow the SFA tried to pass that observation off as if it answered the questions to our satisfaction.

In fact, it only raised fresh ones.

“It doesn’t really matter whether Jota was or was not in fact onside,” Alan writes. “What matters is that it appears the governing body may once again be misleading Celtic and the entire Scottish football community. The SFA are being less than clear as to how the technology supporting VAR is used. They are supporting a decision that is supposed to be definitive but based on all the available evidence, could not possibly be so and indeed the decision-making process did not appear to follow the SFA guidelines.”

Alan raises great issues in his piece, the kind that demand answers be given.

He ends the article with a summation of the times we know – for a fact, with documented proof – that the SFA has blatantly lied to our club. This is not a new phenomenon. It is not a one off.

There is a history of this which all our fans are well aware and cannot ignore.

Nor can Celtic ignore the questions Alan has raised. That’s why his final line might well be the most important one in the whole piece.

“Over to you, Michael Nicholson.”

http://celticbynumberscom.ipage.com/have-the-sfa-lied-to-celtic-again/

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  • Laurie Burns says:

    Happy to read this blatant lies, cheating and bias is being highlighted and needs to be taken up by the Club to a serious level. No settling for more lies, excuses or smoke screens. As a shareholder and support I am expecting the Club to protect players, backroom staff, supporters and shareholders from any physical, mental or economic harm this blatant cheating can inflict.

    • Dora says:

      Too right Laurie Burns, it’s gone way beyond a joke-every game there’s blatant cheating going on..!!
      Thankfully this team could be two down with a few mins to go and still manage to win…2022
      And there’s still blatant bent mib in Scotland…disgraceful!!
      God bless Ange and thank Fk the ranger footy klub are a pile of gik

  • sparks says:

    And not forgetting that SFA referee chief Crawford Allan chose to speak out and become very vocal about offside goals before VAR….only on one occasion it has to be added and he certainly didn’t back his referee…of course it being an offside goal for Celtic is probably just coincidence but his silence is deafening on this very contemptuous issue in the game then and now….

  • John S says:

    Celtic MUST take action on the conduct of the SFA. Not to do so would be corporate neglect.

  • Zeddy says:

    The only thing that matters to the SFA is money…..and perhaps a little credibility. Celtic fans hold both in their hands. 1. Don’t buy the tickets to cup competitions at all. 2. Buy the tickets and boycott the start. What’s the point of whining do something. We’ve been lucky so far that we have not dropped points.It will come though.

  • Mark b says:

    It’s a great article. There is no excuse for Celtic to NOT send a letter based on the three choices that Dickinson had as described in that article. If Nicholson does not that I shall be very dissapppinted as it’s a very simple and reasonable set of questions. No paranoia is not focussed on wassit offside or not but focussed on how Dickinson made his decision.

  • Brian says:

    Oh bollocks. Celtic knew about the EBTs and the euro licence better known as resolution 12 and chose to do nothing our club is run by cowards. Go on prove me wrong Celtic! Oh how I would love that.

  • John Monaghan says:

    I think the SFA BOUGHT the made in china version

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