Celtic left-back Greg Taylor has clearly been left disappointed with accusations of diving at St Mirren over the last week.
The Hoops secured a 4-0 win against St Mirren in Paisley on Wednesday night. However, it came amidst controversy after Taylor went down to win a penalty that led to Neil Lennon’s men going 2-0 ahead.
In the end, it proved to be a crucial moment. Yet St Mirren boss Jim Goodwin came out on two occasions and hammered Taylor for the incident. Firstly, he stated that his feet “crumpled” underneath him, before stating that not even his seven-year-old son would’ve thrown himself to ground so easily.
Lennon defended the Scotland international last night. But now Greg himself has come out and faced the accusations, and it’s clear he’s been left irked by them.
As quoted by the Glasgow Times, Taylor said: “It’s not true, and I was disappointed to be fair, because there was more than one contact in the move. I’m not someone who would go down easy, and unfortunately he’s felt the need to comment. I’ve never been accused of that in the past.
“We had a game to focus on today and I tried to turn my attentions to that. He was maybe hurting as they had lost the game, I don’t know, you’d need to ask Jim that. We had all our focus on today and it’s certainly something I couldn’t be accused of.
“I don’t want to label it as anything, it was Jim’s words. He felt the need to speak out on it, and certainly I didn’t believe that to the case and I don’t think many others did. It is what it is. It was a foul, it was a penalty, so I’ll draw a line under it now and hopefully, I won’t speak about it again.”
Celtic star Taylor right to be annoyed with St Mirren boss; a ridiculous spotlight put on a nothing incident
I never really understood the spotlight this incident received. It feels similar to the Albian Ajeti one at Kilmarnock nearly a fortnight ago. All that happened here was that Greg felt the contact and went down. Something footballers all over the world do on a weekly basis.
Are you honestly telling me that players around Scotland haven’t been doing this all season? It’s one of the main reasons certain clubs are where they are in the table. You feel the contact and you go down – it’s rife within the game.
If you don’t like it then fair enough. I’m one of those who isn’t a big fan of the modern-day penalty offences. The game is almost non-contact like and you can sense that when defenders don’t want to make challenges in their own box.
Yet Taylor has been dragged out, as Ajeti was last week, as some sort of special case. As if he has some sort of case to answer. It’s absolutely nonsensical and massively unfair to the player himself given he certainly didn’t dive.
If it was such a massive mistake from the referee, it would’ve been cited by the SFA. Instead, they’ve clearly acknowledged the fact it was a penalty. No surprise to see Greg agreeing either.
It’s time to draw a line under this now. Everyone has had their say and it’s time to move on. But Celtic would be wise to monitor whether similar incidents get the same spotlight as Taylor’s and Ajeti’s.
In other news, Celtic’s upcoming opponents saw their crisis deepen on Saturday.
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