Ibrox Fans Ramp Up The Mad Conspiracy Theory Around Celtic’s “Lack Of Yellow Cards.”

I presume most of us, by now, have heard the ridiculous contents of an Ibrox fan media “phone in” which degenerated into farce when all involved, including one mad caller, lent credence to one of their more ridiculous “theories” of recent years?

If you haven’t you can listen to them here.

You’ll have gathered that “the fixture list” is included in that rant as one of Scottish football’s grey areas falling under “the dark arts.” These Peepul must be roused to fury by today’s stories; their acolytes in the media most certainly are.

This thing about the yellow cards is remarkable.

It is one of the daftest conspiracy theories that has ever been pushed by these Peepul, and I say that as someone who has chronicled the worst of them. They simply do not accept that there is a logical explanation for it, and yet the logical explanation for it is perfectly clear and obvious.

Celtic fans have been banging on about the same issue, but from the other side of the debate. How does a team with so much of the ball get so many fouls awarded against them? We have, on occasion, had as much as three times as many fouls given against us as have our opponents in those games, and often with approaching 80% of the ball.

I think we’re the ones who are entitled to question that.

We seem to get fouls given against us for ridiculous reasons, and the number of them is so great that it stands out a mile. Let’s be honest, if it didn’t stand out a mile the Peepul would never have spotted the spike on the graph. They are just daft enough to mis-interpret what it means, but even they aren’t so stupid that they didn’t see it in the first place.

The answer to their question – not that they ever frame it as one, more of an assertion that this “proves” that some form of scam is being run on them – is that a foul has be particularly reckless or vicious to before it qualifies as a booking.

Easy enough to understand, right? But not for them apparently.

And the truth is, most of the fouls given against us are so soft that they come nowhere near to hitting that mark. This further demonstrates that it’s Celtic fans who have a case to ask questions rather than them, and for us it might just simply be that we press high and hard and with an emphasis on winning the ball back when we lose it.

I would dispute that in a lot of these cases, but I can see where the argument makes some sense. It is certainly not proof that refs are lenient on us, and I cannot believe that anyone can see that number of fouls given against us and believe that they are.

But they do believe it. Listen to those clips, check out their forums and you will see that it’s true.

This is more than just paranoia. This is pathological.