The Good Ship Celtic sails on an ocean of bitterness and that is never clearer than when we win when they don’t expect us to or when we have to graft for it and get there by sheer determination. The hard-luck story of the opposition is only one part of it. Every controversy involving us, whether real or imagined, generates days and days of angry denunciation.
There were decisions yesterday I have no complaint with except for one. That penalty given against us would never have been given against the club from Ibrox, and we know it wouldn’t because we’ve seen it denied their opponents. They got a nearly identical decision on Saturday.
A penalty is a penalty, and I think handball in the box is a spot kick … but not it seems when it falls against them or goes our way. Equally, I have no problem with the penalty we didn’t get. I thought the foul was outside the box. But an identical incident involving Tillman, and which the press didn’t want to discuss at all, went their way very recently.
I thought Kilmarnock were absolutely cheated on Saturday with the decision they didn’t get, and which would certainly have been given the other way. I said so in a piece after the game, when McInnes had done his usual bit of soft-soaping the matter. Oh he complained but not to anyone that matters. He was content to piss in the wind.
Yesterday we were a goal down before St Mirren lost a man to a deserved red card. That, if you believe the media, was the moment that “turned the game.”
Forget that the red card was for denying a goal-scoring opportunity to Kyogo, the one guy you don’t allow a one-on-one with a keeper, and that the game was one way traffic … we’re supposed to believe that we got a lucky break in the game rather than just a fine managerial switch a half time.
Now some people want our second goal chopped off.
You know what? I say let them have it.
They can have another one as well, we’d have won 3-1 and my old man would have got his correct score coupon up. In fact, there was a stat just after we scored the fifth about how in Ange’s 99th game we had now put the ball in the net 250 times.
So let’s be generous. These people are never going to give us credit.
It sticks in their craw just to acknowledge that we’re actually winning matches.
I wrote a Keith Jacksass spoof last year about how we’d never scored a “fair” goal in our history, that if you look back on every game we’ve ever played you can find a foul which wasn’t given before the ball went in the net, even if you have to look half an hour back into the game.
But a record like that … 250 goals in under 100 games. So let’s be generous.
We’ll pick not one, not two, not even ten but fifty goals scored under Ange and the Blood God can have them. Satisfy the lust of everybody out there who grudges us it, who hates us for being this damned good, this damned effective, this damned successful.
And you know what?
This team will still average two goals per game.
Which over the course is still comfortably title winning form.
If that doesn’t slap into some Peepul just how good this team actually is then I don’t know what will.
Maybe one day they’ll grit their teeth and force out an acknowledgement of it.
What they don’t appear to realise is just how much additional fun it is watching them foam at the mouth raging. It’s like that line in White Boy Rick, “Do you want fries with that?”
Bang on until your concluding line. Never, never, never
I don’t have an issue with their penalty. I have an issue with 5 minutes of VAR to pull it back though. The entirely correct red card didn’t change the game. They had 10 men in their box pre red card and 10 men in their box after it. They only lost their (very occasional) out ball. They were always going to tire, even with 11. We were always going to win when we stopped playing crosses and started playing the ball to feet.
As for the goal being chopped off? If anyone believes a VAR room headed by Andrew Dallas didn’t scrutinise every aspect of every one of our goals looking for a reason to disallow them, I have a bridge to sell them.
What would have happened Martin, if Celtic had scored during that 5 mins you mentioned? It could have happened very easily. It has got to the stage that I don’t cheer a goal until the opposition have re centered.
VAR would have intervened at that point and chopped it off, restart penalty for St Mirren. To be fair this issue isn’t one of VAR per se, just how slowly the people at this match were using it. That penalty review could have and should have been done within 30 seconds of the appeal. I suspect that with the exception of reviewing goals, we’re going to see a time limit introduced on VAR within 5 years.
The rangers penalty was even harder tae spot, than the blatant one, when mcgregor pulls the legs from the kilmarnock player and the ‘officials’ made sure they got it. The mcgregor one wasn’t even checked by the ref on var, it’s incredible. All designed tae give the ibrox club a chance if we slipped up and the more we keep goin, the more desperate, angry and frustrated they all get. Even better for us right enough !
Can’t for the life of me understand why Dallas didn’t jump on the 2nd goal with his orange VAR glasses on as there was a case for denying the goal that he could have utilised. The biggest hurt and sense of disappointment for the swine of morons, not just the huns but right across the orange league supporters, is that they feel let down by ‘one of their own’.
It’s hard to carry on with the support of fairness when you see what’s going on with the continuous cheating benefitting that lot but while the cream keeps rising and we remain so convincingly on top I’m happy to show an egalitarian evenhandedness as an example of our nonpartisan Celtic class. Winning is great but it’s even better when it’s in the face of all their manipulations. HH
No red, no yellow for the so called hand ball on Taylor, ipso facto, it’s fucking accidental so no penalty!.
Even as kids playing park football and am sure all the refs did we all knew even then what was an accident and deliberate and on went the game.
It’s no longer a joke , it’s straight out corruption and the look on Ange face tells you all you need to know.
Come on SPFL! Come on Cinch !!!
Your product is being made to look corrupt by these bastards are you going to stand by and allow the good name of Cinch be blackened.
That’s not really the case. Most handballs don’t require a card. Most handball penalties I give don’t draw a card. Needs to be DOGSO for a red (guy punches the ball away from a striker’s head etc) or a shot towards goal, or utterly cynical, for a yellow.
It should have been chalked off and the St Mirren one was a penalty. I don’t have a problem in stating that. I just have a problem with reading time after time that they got a dodgy pen and their opponents were denied one. It’s way beyond a joke now.
Kyogo is still being fouled when he enters the box, it’s a penalty. Someone posted elsewhere a link to the rule(12), if an offence begins outside the box and continues inside it is a penalty.
But the offence didn’t continue into the box. Kyogo (or part of him at least) may have entered the box, but not the shoulder that was being held. The foul is the hold on his shoulder, not just any part of Kyogo. That stopped outside the box. Therefore it’s a free kick. Unfortunately the internet is full of people misinterpreting that rule.
My understanding is if the player is in the box when fouled it’s a penalty. If you say it’s point of contact then I’m happy to be corrected. Defender was outside, Kyogo was inside. Every day is a school day.
a dallas in the var room….enough said…
however…i wouldn’t have complained if johnston’s goal had been chalked off….he was climbing all over the defender…not sure if the ball played his arm or chest…
the more controversy concerning celtic goals – that are awarded – the better as far as i’m concerned…love to hear the bastards squeal……
Martin, if Kyogo wasn’t pulled back by his shoulder he could have been able to continue moving with the rest of his body which is ahead of his shoulder and well inside the box
Correct, Horsis, that’s why it was a red card. But the logical extension to that is that if Kyogo wasn’t pulled back it wasn’t a foul. I’m not sure what point you think you’re making, but you’re not making it.
Contact was outside the box, didn’t continue into the box. Free kick, not penalty. Your or my opinion on whether it should be is irrelevant, we go by the IFAB laws of the game. By those laws it’s a free kick and not a penalty. No amount of wishful thinking, or whatabouttery regarding other decisions which were wrong changes that. This was an example of VAR being used well and if we really want, as we claim, a fair application of the rules to all teas then we need to start accepting when decisions are rightly given a different way than we would wish.
Johnston goal, if it came off his hand and not deliberate its a fkn goal. Like Goldson in penalty box ,just play on.
Fkem
The exception to accidental handball is if it’s by the goalscorer, where all handball are considered to be a foul and the goal must be chopped off (except of course if goalie throws it from their own box, somehow)