The fallout from Celtic’s 3-1 victory over Motherwell has followed a depressingly familiar script. Despite a great result at Parkhead, the post-match conversation hasn’t focused on Hyunjun Yang’s double or another superb comeback from the Hoops.
Instead, the conversation is surrounding pundits demanding to know why Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain wasn’t sent off in the seventh minute of Celtic’s win over Motherwell.
Motherwell boss Jens Berthel Askou led the charge, claiming Elijah Just’s leg looked like he’d “come back from war.”
It’s a strange narrative to peddle, especially since Elijah Just played 83 minutes of the defeat and still managed to shake off his war-torn injury.
But where was the outcry when Kieran Tierney’s ankle was stamped on in Celtic’s win at Aberdeen? There was none, at least from these pundits anyway.
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What Jens Berthel Askou said about Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain’s tackle
Askou’s immediate post-match Celtic Park comments were pretty fair on the penalty and red card, however, with Oxlade-Chamberlain’s tackle, he was not so forgiving.
The Fir Park boss told the Daily Record, “When you play these venues, sometimes you need the 50-50 calls, that you can’t control, to go our way.
“And once again, that was not the case. That was obviously the situation with Eli in the beginning.
“He’s very, very sore. He looks swollen down the leg. It doesn’t look good. It looks like he’s been at war.
“You have to take the cuts and the bruises and the knocks and then trust that the referees will do what they need to do to look after him.
“I can’t see why he wasn’t called to the monitor in that case, but, done is done.”
“I’ve seen that turn into a red card a lot more often than the penalty given in a fight on the ball in the box. Fair enough, that’s the call.”
The Celtic hypocrisy on show after Kieran Tierney ankle stamp silence
Was it a heavy challenge? Possibly. Mis-timed and not malicious is probably a fairer assessment. Was it a yellow card? John Beaton thought so, and the record shows a booking was issued. Yet, the clamour for a VAR intervention and a straight red has been relentless.
This would be easier to swallow if the same level of scrutiny were applied across the board. The hypocrisy becomes undeniable when you look back just ten days to Pittodrie.
When Aberdeen’s Toyosi Olusanya left his studs in Celtic defender Kieran Tierney’s foot, and it was an incident that eventually forced the Scotland international off the pitch and out the Scottish Cup tie against Rangers.
The silence from pundits in the media was deafening. There were no pleas for player safety then. There were no hyperbolic claims about players ‘going to war’. It was never discussed at all.
Why is an innocuous, albeit clumsy, challenge from Oxlade-Chamberlain treated like a national scandal while a clear stamp on Tierney is treated as a footnote? Only Celtic fans will know the answer to that.
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