Another nervy game on Saturday evening at Celtic Park, which I guess is understandable in the present circumstances, with some new players added to the squad etc. Dundee are a decent team, and have a couple of decent players in their squad, I thought the goalkeeper Jon Mc Cracken did well, and Ethan Hamilton scored a cracking goal, and had a good all round game, although I believe he’s there on loan from Man Utd, we should always be aware of good players playing under our noses in Scotland.
I thought Joel Mvuka started brightly enough, but then faded towards the end of the first half. Big Tam puts plenty into his game, I just feel he is isolated a lot of the time, I would like to see someone closer to him to support him and hopefully feed off him, in fact I’m surprised Martin hasn’t switched to 4-4-2, for at least part of the game. What a start for Junior Adamu, he showed a real striker’s initiative to score the equaliser, hopefully there’s more to come from him. All our substitutes contributed to our victory, once again Sebastian played a big part with a goal and assist.
I think the big talking point at the game was the performance of the match officials, all of them, from the baffling referee Ryan Lee, to his accomplices on VAR, Andrew Dallas and David Dickenson, and North Stand Linesman Douglas Ross. The referee was hopeless the whole game, he continued to let the Dundee keeper waste time from the kick-off until we took the lead in extra time. There were at least two scandalous decisions, the non-awarding of a penalty to Celtic in the first half for a blatant push in the box in the first half, the VAR check took about five seconds to get it completely wrong. Then there was the high kick to the face of Kieran Tierney, which should have resulted in a Red Card, ironically, we scored during the couple of minutes added on for the injury to Kieran. You could say the decision was subjective, but there were examples to compare it to, for instance when Yang was sent off at Tynecastle raising his boot with minimal contact to the players shoulder.
We saw an increase in dodgy officiating in the last couple of months, which seem to coincide with the apparent resurgence in form by Sevco, I think we can say with a fair degree of certainty that David Dickenson has played a significant part in that resurgence. You can also say that some of decisions that have went against Celtic in the same period, would be filed under the “Cheating Banner” rather than the “Could have went either way Banner” I firmly believe that’s the game we will be playing from now until the end of the season, we will have to beat the match officials as well as the opposing team, so if you’ll excuse the “Pun” we’ll need everyone onside.
And talking about “Cheating” surprise surprise, we are drawn away to Snake Mountain in the quarter final of the Scottish Cup, the last round before it’s a neutral venue. I would love to check how many times Sevco have been drawn away from home in cup ties in their short history. I don’t know how they do it, but you probably have a better chance of Gregory Campbell being the next leader of the Garvaghy Road Tenants Association, than there is of Sevco being drawn away from home for a cup tie in Scotland.
Glasgow’s still Green and White.
