Celtic show moaning rivals how to respond to controversial decisions

By David Walton

March 15, 2022

Celtic’s win against Dundee United last night may have looked routine, but the Hoops also managed to get the job done with some controversy going against them.

In recent weeks, we’ve heard the non-stop moaning of the Rangers support ringing in our ears. This is due to the fact they’ve consistently failed to pick up victories whilst being on the end of some controversy.

Certain decisions have gone against them in recent weeks. They probably should’ve had a penalty on their last trip to Tannadice. They were also left fuming with what they felt was an offside goal in their 2-2 draw against Motherwell. If it isn’t their manager calling for VAR [Daily Record], it’s their supporters absolutely losing the plot and blaming everyone but themselves for Celtic overtaking them.

Yet last night at Tannadice in a high-intensity Scottish Cup clash, we had an absolute shocker of a decision go against us. John Beaton appeared to forget the new IFAB rules as he ruled out a perfectly legitimate Daizen Maeda goal when we were 1-0 up. This was due to him ruling it out for an accidental handball from Giorgos Giakoumakis.

Last season, that goal would’ve indeed have been ruled out. But this year, IFAB changed their rules to state that any accidental handball that precedes a goal would now indeed stand [Premier League].

So in this case, we literally had John Beaton do us out a goal that would’ve ended the match. Now, if this was Rangers, we’d have been hearing stories of them contacting the SFA this morning and using it as an excuse for United scoring 2 goals and winning the game.

Celtic get the job done despite controversy

Celtic’s reaction to that disallowed goal was absolutely top notch. We didn’t go and crowd around Beaton before feeling sorry for ourselves. Instead, we kept up the incessant pressure and managed to score 2 more in the second half to see the job through.

That’s the kind of mentality you need to have at this stage of the season. We can’t be going to places like Tannadice looking for excuses to pop up.

There’s no denying that had we failed to get through into the semi-final stages the we would’ve been hearing plenty about the disallowed goal. That’s natural. But it wouldn’t be getting spun as the sole reason we were put out of the cup. There would be plenty of Celtic supporters who would be looking at other more fundamental areas for us going out.

But the mentality of this Celtic team isn’t one to drop the heads after a bad decision goes against us. Look at the red card Nir Bitton received against Dundee United back in January too. We picked ourselves back up and got a winner in added time. It was the same in Dingwall back in December when Carl Starfelt was red-carded.

Celtic are consistently getting the job done despite bad decisions going our way. Rangers could certainly learn a thing or 2 from us.

We’re all now just praying and hoping that it ends up leading us to trophy success in May. The signs so far are certainly promising.

In other news, “Outstanding” Callum McGregor picked out by Celtic boss for Tannadice praise