Steven Robinson’s deflection tactics v Celtic aren’t fooling anyone

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For a man who cried foul so many times against Celtic last season, you would think Stephen Robinson would hold his hands up and apologise for yesterday.

Celtic were 2-0 ahead and cruising against Motherwell at Parkhead yesterday. Yet, in a shocking turn of events, Motherwell refused to give the ball back to Celtic after they kicked it out of play so Ryan Christie could receive treatment.

Not unexpectedly, Motherwell scored from the two-vs-one situation, ending Celtic’s sensational domestic clean sheet run.

Robinson, however, was quick to have a pop back at Celtic for Carl McHugh’s injury, before insisting the incident would gloss over how well Motherwell played. Speaking to the BBC, Robinson gave his own reaction.

“In truth, I didn’t know what to do. You’ve got a young boy, starting his first game, 18 years of age, on a couple of hundred quid a week, great prospect, super, super boy that we have real high hopes for.

“He got caught up in the occasion. It shouldn’t have happened but it did and he’ll recover from that. He’s going to be a top, top footballer.

“It’ll deflect from how good a performance we put in. There’s so many good things in that game. Did we deserve to lose 4-1? No, we didn’t.”

Manages to praise his own man in the end

Call this good man-management, but it feels like deflection. Robinson is hardly going to call out his player for the incident, but there’s hardly any apologetic language here either.

Robinson is also conveniently forgetting what happened after the goal. Instead of allowing Celtic to take their goal back, he allowed his players to play on. Nothing had happened apparently.

All Robinson provided us here was an appraisal of how good James Scott is going to be in the future. There’s no apology, no real remorse, and certainly no regret.

For a man who couldn’t help but consistently moan about decisions Celtic got last season, you would expect more decency from him. Robinson is trying to play the sympathy card in that we should all be talking about how well Motherwell played.

And whilst he’s right in the sense that Motherwell played well, their lack of class was on full show and rids them of the credit they would’ve had. Robinson has nobody to blame but his team and himself, as much as he wants to deflect away from it.