CELTIC Assistant Manager Chris Davies has admitted that he was “surprised” that the Rangers goalkeeper Allan McGregor has escaped punishment for his blatant kick on young Celtic star Kristoffer Ajer in Sunday’s Glasgow Derby.
Apparently the 3 man panel, made up from former referees, took a look at the kick and while they were able to restrain themselves enough not to ban the Norwegian for play acting, they found no fault whatsoever in what McGregor did.
Had he kicked someone like that outside of football he’s have committed a criminal offence – in Scottish football these days, it’s not worthy of any sanction whatsoever.
“I am surprised,” Davies said at Lennoxtown today. The Celtic Assistant manager was handling press duties ahead of this Saturday’s ‘A Match For Cancer’ charity game, with Brendan Rodgers away for a few days in the sun.
“It was pretty clear if you saw the replays of it. We were surprised that it wasn’t sorted out afterwards,” Davies noted. Indeed even the Rangers manager Steven Gerrard, who has been extremely ‘staunch’ on just about everything since he accepted Dave King’s shilling, thought that it was a ‘blatant’ red card. Davies isn’t prepared to dwell on the failings of the SFA and their apparent bias towards one club.
“But at the same time it is something that is done, there is no point us worrying about, talking about it, thinking about it too much, it’s done.
“I am just pleased that our player wasn’t injured in the incident, that’s the only thing I am thinking about.”
Davies also addressed the non story of the absence of loan signing Daniel Arzani from Celtic’s Europa League squads. We covered the squad announcement last night – see HERE – and focused on the absence of Marvin Compper and Scott Allan but didn’t think that the young Australian absence from the squad was much of a surprise.
Davies cleared up the ‘mystery’ regardless. “Daniel is still adapting to the environment here.
“He is two weeks into his training programme here, which is in normal terms still early pre-season So he still has a way to go to build up to speed.
“But he has a two-year loan, he is a young player and we will support him to develop here.
“But in terms if registering your squad you have to make decisions and we did.”
