In a remarkable chain of events, Scottish referee Bobby Madden has been reprimanded by Crawford Allan because of his dealing with the incident directly after the Jota injury, relating to a dropped ball scenario which took place in the game against Hearts.
In an ironic twist of fate, refereeing decisions seem to on the agenda following Celtic earning a victory over Hearts the other night which kept us in the hunt for the title this season. For some time now, Celtic fans have been asking en-masse for a review of refereeing in this country – owing to some highly dubious officiating coming from our top officials.
Bobby Madden has been notoriously difficult on Celtic FC when refereeing our games and it begs the question why only now is there serious debate about decisions and the implementation of VAR? Could it be we have a lot of people running scared?
The Celtic Star reported earlier this evening that SFA Head of Refereeing, Crawford Allan was on BBC Sportsound and confirmed Madden had been spoken to regarding his officiating on Thursday night. He said to BBC Sportsound: “So it’s not just head knocks, it’s serious injury to a player. Now, you can argue all day long that it wasn’t serious injury to the player to stop the game.
“The fact the player got taken off and replaced, Bobby’s decision at the time was that he was very close to it. I’ve spoken to Bobby on this. He said it was clear the player was in severe pain. It wasn’t just one where a player falls and screams. He said it was clear to him an injury had occurred. He stopped the game because of that — that’s Bobby’s opinion in terms of how he does that, it’s in the laws of the game that a referee can stop the game if, in his opinion, a player is seriously injured. Is a hamstring a serious injury? Debatable.
“Where I think there’s definitely the error from our point of view, and I’ve chatted to Bobby on this, was the restart. By the time Bobby got the whistle to his mouth, which was only less half a second or so, Hearts then had possession and what should have been done is Hearts should have had the drop ball and been allowed to retain possession. At the time his view was the Celtic player had just stopped playing with it, had gone down and he blew, and Celtic still had it. But having spoken to Bobby it was clear Hearts had it. It should have been a drop ball for Hearts.”
Ridiculous. Simply ridiculous.
Did Mr Allan negate to look at the challenge on Tony Ralston from Barrie McKay on Thursday evening, or going back to Tyncastle the shocker from hammer thrower Andy Halliday which could have severely damaged Callum McGregor?
Scottish football never ceases to amaze, dumbfound, and bemuse all at the same time. If we are so upset about a bounced ball, it begs the question: why are we not concerned with erroneous fouling and penalty claims? I would sure like someone from the SFA to come out and explain the deal of late.
Paul Gillespie
It’s ridiculous the amount of attention this is getting when you have routinely honest mistakes for the team across the water. This won’t bode good for Celtic as Madden and his other Klansman will now double down on their treatment of Celtic for fear of further reprimands.
Take a step back. Madden and his linesman missed the offside. No-one will be angrier than Bobby the h*n about this.
Hearts seemto forget that only one defender half heartedly raised his hand claiming offside. Only one, and for a couple of seconds only.
But think about the gamesmanship from Jack Ross this week when his teamhad a late penalty against them and now this commotion together with this is designed solely to gain referees advantage in the cup final coming up.
As for Neilson, he really should stop embarrassing himself withsome of his statements! They are clearly designed to throw up a smokescreen to hide his failings!
What many coaches seem to forget that playing to your best alone doesn’t entitle youto take points. If playing your very best only brings you up to 40% level ofyour opponents on an off day for them, you still don’t deserve anything!
“We were as good as them” “we deserved at least a draw if not a win”.
Stats for the game showed Celtic had 69.6% possession to Hearts 30.4%.
50% of Hearts possession was in their own defensive end.
Celtic had 25 shots to Hearts 9.
Celtic had 16 on target to Hearts 5.
Celtic commited 12 fouls to Hearts 29.
There were several other errors. Fouls on Ralston and Kyogo were yellow and red respectively and there was 80 odd mins left to look at at after that.
Every ref is crap or biased or ” Stockholmed “.
They are collectively taking the piss .