Celtic And The Fouls Per Cards Debate Is Another One Ibrox’s Fans Have Backwards.

Yesterday, a clownish Ibrox fan who has clearly spent too much time mushing his brains on their forums, went on to Radio Clyde and laid out his theory about refs being in the pockets of Celtic.

We get so many fouls given against us during games but hardly any result in bookings. This, in his view, proves that we get some kind of free ride from officials.

This joker has actually stumbled onto an actual issue for our club and our fans, but without even realising that he’s done it, because of course this fool has it all back to front.

The reason that we don’t get yellow cards and that very little that our players do actually merits being booked. The issue for our fans is that little we do merits giving fouls either.

Celtic plays a high-intensity press. That means that we try to win the ball back when the opposition has it. But it is a nonsense to suggest that this makes us a dirty team. Yet almost every game now, a side with an average between 70-80% of the possession in its games winds up with the highest foul count. That’s worthy of a close examination from someone.

The fact is, officials are doing their damned level best to break up our style of play. We are awarded fouls against for everything and sometimes nothing.

The most innocuous incident leads to refs stopping our games regularly to give free kicks the other way. Sides playing against Celtic are offered an almost absurd level of protection from referees, including an apparent unwillingness to book their own players until they commit multiple offences.

Yesterday was yet another case in point.

We had 78% of the possession, so the bulk of the ball during the game.

Yet we committed 13 fouls to Aberdeen’s 6? I was astonished at the game how many nips and niggles Aberdeen got away with. It’s when I came home and found that double the number of free kicks were given to them as to us that I realised just how outrageous what I had watched actually was.

How can a side with a mere 22% of possession wind up with more free kicks than the team that has been in total command of the game? And this happens to us week in, week out, without fail, and almost always without comment in the media .. .except when some idiot like this pops up to propose this bizarre theory, which took root on Ibrox fan forums.

Yesterday some fool took it onto national radio.

I have no idea what they made of it, but in some ways it’s a discussion we should be pushing. Because there is something going on here, just not what the semi-literate eejits on those forums think it is.