Steven Naismith makes odd claim about Celtic penalty award as Bhoys beat Hearts

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Celtic powered to a 2-0 victory over Hearts in the Scottish Premiership on Saturday, their sixth successive win in all competitions this season.

Arne Engels introduced himself with aplomb to score a penalty after 51 minutes before Luke McCowan also showed his Celtic potential with a classy finish off the woodwork to close out the win.

In truth, the scoreline could have been greater. Kyogo Furuhashi missed a couple of gilt-edged chances in the first half with Adam Idah also having a goal narrowly ruled out due to offside.

Hearts did have fleeting moments in the match and thought they’d won a penalty with the scoreline locked at 0-0, but that was overturned via VAR and they couldn’t beat Kasper Schmeichel.

Steven Naismith shares penalty thoughts as Celtic beat Hearts

Tynecastle boss Steven Naismith admitted that the decision not to award his side a spot-kick was the correct one, but also bizarrely claimed that his side were wrongly penalised when James Penrice clearly stopped a cross with his hands in the box.

He said [Edinburgh Evening News]: “I don’t think our penalty is a penalty in the guidelines in terms of the distance between the players. But I also don’t think theirs is a penalty. It’s down to opinion.

“With the images we were shown before the season, it’s all down to distance. It hits his arm, but for me there’s nothing he [Penrice] can do. The motion is the one that we were shown in pre-season. So I disagree with that and that’s a big moment in the game.

“What the interpretation has been is that there are times the ball hits somebody’s hand and there’s nothing they can do. We accept that. I just feel that both of them are in the same ballpark. I don’t think the distance between James and the ball is great enough that he can get his hand out the way.”

The clear difference in Celtic Park penalty incidents

It’s an odd verdict considering the Liam Scales incident showed that the ball hit him above the ‘t-shirt line’, meaning it was never going to be a penalty regardless of distance once video evidence was used. They are not similar incidents at all.

Penrice blatantly obstructed the ball with his arms up. It was 100% the correct decision to give Celtic the penalty, which Engels stuck away nicely.

Naismith is well within his rights to take his own view of what happened but if he looks at the footage again, he might admit to himself there’s nothing much to moan about here – even if he doesn’t do so publicly.