HAMILTON manager Martin Canning, who always comes across as one of the good guys of Scottish football, was mad about the sending off of Darren Lyon.
He had every right to be mad with his player who having just got himself deservedly booked for a challenge on Kieran Tierney got involved with the same Celtic player a few minutes later. By pulling the Celtic player to the ground Lyon was always going to give referee Andrew Dallas a decision to make.
Hamilton were very much in the game at 1-1 at that stage and the red card allowed Brendan Rodgers to take off a defender and bring on a second striker – Leigh Griffiths – who wasted no time in scoring the winning goal.
So Canning has every reason to be mad with his own player.
He could also have reason to be mad with Dallas. Was it a bookable offence? Probably not, but it did merit a word in the ear, the common sense approach adopted by better or more experienced referees.
So we get Canning’s frustration and had the boot been on the other foot the Celtic supporters would have let Dallas know what we thought of his decision.
Where we want to take issue with the Hamilton manager is bringing Celtic into the situation.
“A referee should use his common sense in that situation, if there were bad fouls in the game then maybe I could understand,” Canning told BT Sport after the game.
“If it was the other way round, would Celtic get a player sent off for something similar? I don’t think they would.
Wait a minute Martin, wait a minute…
Callum McGregor – hardly the dirtiest player in Scottish football – was sent off last season in the Hamilton v Celtic match for effectively bumping into your player.
Here is the footage..
And your description of what happened is a little bit warped too.
“If anything it’s a foul on Darren Lyon and then Darren tries to pull him out the road and get on with the game and Tierney throws himself to the floor and Darren gets himself sent off,” Canning claimed.
“It’s extremely, extremely soft and if the referee is going to pull that up then it’s a foul for us first and on the back of no bad tackles in the game, you think he’ll speak to both players and say calm down a bit, but to quickly brandish a second yellow card and send someone off for that that is soft.”
If these things do even themselves out then that is exactly what happened today.
