Celtic Have The Advantage Now, In Spite Of Beaton Playing His Part To Perfection.

A day on, my view of what happened yesterday hasn’t changed all that much. An outstanding first half where we played them off the park gave way to a hesitant, bang-average second where we allowed them back into the game. When we got the third all we had to do was shut the door and keep them out and we somehow conspired to let that away from us.

My disappointment is tempered slightly by the knowledge that they know they escaped with a point, by the skin of their teeth, in a home game which they thought they only had to show up to win. We’ve proved that we’re the better team, we’ve proved that we have the vastly better manager in the dugout and we are now almost certainly favourites for the title.

We need to win six games to do it. That’s the kind of run we’ve gone on this season and we’re more than capable of doing it again. Our players know what they need to do, and in the home games especially I think we’re just going to be way, way too strong. The Ibrox club will dread coming to Celtic Park on the back of that first half yesterday.

As I wrote the other day, prior to the match, this was their shot and they knew it. Home advantage, not a Celtic fan in the stadium, a half-fit Celtic midfield duo and their hand-picked referee. They were in a strong position except they aren’t nearly as good as they think they are. Most importantly, they needed to win. We only needed to get out with the point. In terms of the mission, it was part of the way done. We’ve hurt them and they know it.

But one person played his part on their behalf yesterday; John Beaton, who is garnering great praise in the media for what I thought was an abysmal performance.

He was not going to give the penalty, until his mind was changed. He’d had given the second Ibrox goal straight after it although the foul in the build-up was absolutely crystal clear.

And he should have booked Silva before he got the yellow out for him for a breathtakingly cynical and embarrassing performance.

Beaton was so bad yesterday that I tried to think of where I’ve seen a performance where there was such one-sided benefit of the doubt; the OJ Simpson jury maybe. It was as close to open cheating that you are ever going to see, that’s how I felt watching it.

It’s the foul in the build-up to what would have been their early equaliser which shocked me and which summed up his whole day.

Celtic players were being booked, and our momentum halted, on the flimsiest pretexts. He was perfectly happy to allow the Ibrox players to do whatever they wanted and that Celtic should have had a free kick in that moment was readily apparent to every single person watching the game at home.

His decision not to give it is atrocious. That the VAR officials had to call him over and say to him, “Hey, what in the Hell are you doing? You can’t allow that” should be enough to put him under the spotlight in any other environment. It’s a disgrace that he isn’t. The media love-in he’s getting for having three key decisions overturned is nauseating.

Beaton did his bit to swing that game yesterday, in the little things, because that’s really all that an official has to do; influence the game through the little things, the casual decision to award a free kick to one side but not the other, to allow one team’s game to flow whilst restricting the other. These are the ways officials can decide matches … and titles.

We deserve credit for getting something from the game anyway, and had we been a little better defensively we’d have taken a lot more from it.