Too many Changes Ange. Bullied on the pitch. Normal display from Robertson.

[Joe O'Rourke]

Well this morning for a change, I’m not waxing lyrical about another great performance and victory, it was probably the complete opposite of that. But on the plus side, we were one day short of going a calendar year undefeated in domestic football, which is a brilliant achievement, and should be applauded.

As Big Ange said post-match, there were a thousand reasons for that performance, and the Big Man isn’t infallible, so some of the blame must rest with him, having said that, Ange hasn’t got many wrong, so he’s in credit with me, and we move on. I thought as soon as we heard the team there were too many changes, I’m a great believer in playing your strongest team, and yesterday you would have to say that wasn’t our strongest eleven, although we had a very strong bench, which you hope can change things if needs be, sadly that didn’t happen, and it was a sore defeat to take.

I was especially disappointed not to see Jota, Reo, and Matt O’Riley in the starting line up, I get the rotation policy, and I get some players will be away on International duty, but Jota and Matt were not selected for their National Squads, so should have played from the start. I also thought we got bullied by St Mirren, and that happened all over the pitch, we have to be much stronger in our challenges, both goals were certainly preventable, and the second one especially was poor defending, although it could have been called for offside, and a push in the back on Welshy by the scorer.

I thought once again the officials were shocking. We knew exactly how Saints would play under the guidance of Stephen Robinson. They slowed everything down, broke up the play at every opportunity, little sneaky fouls, jersey tugs and trips, and especially time wasting. This is where the official’s come in, or in yesterday’s case, didn’t come in. Don Robertson has a horrendous record while refereeing Celtic matches, there has been many incidents of serious fouls on Celtic players which he ignored, and yesterday he was at his usual worst.

Yesterday Celtic had 80% possession and were penalised for 11 fouls, a foul about every 6.5 minutes. Saints had 20% possession and had 15 fouls given against them. Now that equates to a fouls by St Mirren every 1.2 minutes, and given the amount of fouls not given by the referee it clearly shows the St Mirren tactics, and the incompetence of the referee to do anything about it. Even in the first half we noticed immediately they were up to their usual anti-football tactics, the referee pointed to his watch a couple times to indicate he would add on time for time wasting, he added on 4 minutes, which is pretty normal for an ordinary football match between two teams trying to actually play football.

I’m certainly not trying to make excuses for our defeat, I was there and seen the performance with my own eyes, and you see a lot more being there than you will watching