In a season where their team has won the SPL comfortably, reached the Scottish Cup semi-final and League Cup final, Celtic supporters have still often voiced their opinion that Scottish referees are biased against their team. With manager Neil Lennon often criticising referees after games Celtic lost, and even taking to Twitter to claim refereeing decisions against Celtic were ‘personal’ (Oh wait, the SFA couldn’t prove it was Lennon that Tweeted that, on his own account), they’ve almost been encouraged to hold that belief.
The reality is that it is laughable for either side of the Old Firm to claim that referees are biased against them. The two biggest clubs in Scotland get more decisions in their favour against the rest of the SPL teams than those teams get against Rangers or Celtic, just like smaller teams will against Manchester United in England, or AC Milan in Italy, or Barcelona in Spain etc etc. But while this won’t stop Celtic fans from crying conspiracy, perhaps the 2011-12 disciplinary charts will at least go some way to finally proving to Celtic supporters that referees are not out to get them.
Because Celtic finished the season with the best disciplinary record in the league, picking up just 40 points in a league table that saw Hibs finish with the worst record, on 84 points. A yellow card equals 1 point, with 2 points for a red card, and Celtic finished with a total of 32 bookings and 4 reds. Dundee United are next on the list with 49 points from 47 bookings and one red, while Rangers had the second worst record with 68 yellow cards and 6 reds. Hibs had a massive 80 yellows, with 2 red cards.
Of course, 32 yellow cards works out at less than a 1 per game average, and a look at those 32 yellows in more detail shows that Celtic players received just 10 yellow cards at home in 19 SPL games, a staggering 15 fewer than the next lowest total of 25. These are hardly numbers that suggest Scottish referees have it in for Celtic, because if they do, why aren’t they dishing out so many yellow and red cards that Celtic have a much bigger discipline problem?
The answer is of course that there is no refereeing bias against Celtic. While the club has produced dossiers that apparently show a ‘high number’ of wrong decisions going against them in the past, and even (allegedly) gone so far as to hire a private detective to follow Hugh Dallas, the reality is that if they lose games, they lose them fairly, not because the officials have conspired against them.
That’s why it’s so tedious to hear Neil Lennon complaining about referees or supporters chanting ‘Who’s the mason/hun in the black’ or even some alleged ‘journalists’ encouraging Celtic supporters to believe that the SFA and referees are
+against them. Every club in every league in every country will sometimes have bad decisions go against them, but it is never because the referee hates the team that feel victimised by his call.
>With all the troubles facing Rangers at the moment, there is a very real chance that Celtic can win the SPL for the foreseeable future, and they should be able to do so without resorting to pointing the finger at referees when they drop points. It’s time for them to wake up to the reality that the right decision will not always be made, and that this is something that happens to every club.
The statistics show that Celtic are not the victim of biased refereeing, let’s hope that in the future, they’ll concentrate on their own failings when they drop points, and not point fingers.
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Firstly, these figures need to be compared with possession figures as it is harder to commit ouls when you have the ball.
Secondly, there have been jobs lost at the SFA due to anti-Celtic bias. Is any further proof needed than this?
Crap of the highest order , Celtic have been cheated for decades with retired referee’s even admitting to giving decisions that would favour Rangers , Do some research Mr Dougan and see the facts , Seem to remember the Ajax coach watching a Rangers Celtic game and when asked what he thought about his next opponents Rangers he replied It was hard to tell as the referee was firmly in Rangers corner , Yes sir Celtic are treated unfairly , If Celtic loose fair and square then I have no problems with that at all , Look at what the Rangers get away with and re write your biased article.
Yes, I imagine that definitely happened and isn’t made up.
if celtic won the champions league,league,2 cups,x factor,euromillions and all olympics golds they would still complain about the evil refs.It’s just a fact of life.I love it.wasp
Always cheated, never defeated. Why don’t Celtc do the sporting integrity thing and just stfu.
bullying readers into believing pathetic statistics. shocking blatantly bias journalism. shows there is a problem that he neeeds to write an article on it.
how come players like Barry Ferguson went 18 months without a yellow card for rangers went to england got red carded twice and loads of yellows in first season. hooper got 2 yellows in a season at Scunthorpe 7 at celtic. diouf got away with refusing to leave pitch after being sent off bougherra assaulting ref di canio style. how come honest mistakes are used as an excuse against celtic and not rangers???????
Who told you that Barry Ferguson ‘fact’ Paul? Because it’s complete fantasy .
farry proven sfa cheat. dallas proven bigot that won rangers the league against CELTIC. THOMSON honest mistakes. McDONALD PROVEN CHEAT. McCurry levine said if he knew he was ref at ibrox he wouldnt have bothered turning up.Collum gives penalty to rangers he didnt see.Diouf Boughera incidents.
Makes no sense. Flawed logic and selective subject matter. Boring.
where’d you get the private detective ‘fact’ david? Surprised you haven’t more to worry you than spinning the old paranoid celtic line. Another fact for you to refute is that some seasons ago b ferguson scored 12 goals, 10 were penalties, celtic were not even awarded 10 pens that season
If you know I mentioned a private detective in the article, you should know that I said allegedly, therefore was not stating it as a fact.
A quick bit of research shows that in the one season Barry Ferguson score more than 10 goals for Rangers, 2002/03, he got 16 in the league, 8 of which were penalties. In that same season, Celtic scored 8 penalties and were awarded at least 9.
What a crap artical your logic is pathetic and you have no idea what your on about. How can you base your reserach on bookings alone when celtic dominate almost every spl game? Of course there not going to have as many bookings as say Hibs who spend 90% of games in there own half with 10 men behind the ball and Leigh Grithis picking his nose on his own up front. Hibs defenders have more to do hence they make more bad timed tackles as seen in the Scotish cup final.
Think back to last year when bougerra grabed the refs hand to drag the card down! In England he would of been given a 5 match ban but not in Scotland.
Rangers on the other hand are just thugs who play terrible football and try to kick and cheat there way to win games with the Ref who normally does a decent job in helping them.
Hun beleivable,
Some of the comments on here are ridiculous!
Like Jhimmy T jnr says, Celtic have had the best disciplinary record this season because in whole we have the most professional team that plays the most attractive football. Quality players tend to frustrate poor players to the extent football goes out the window and the thug within takes over (e.g. Elbows McCulloch’s innocuous challenge on Kayal earlier in the season).
The (poor)big descisions that we Celts get pissed off about are the lieks of the penalty against Hearts in the cup final. Penalty or not is not up fopr debate, it is the inconsistency of the ref, in that 2 minutes later at the other end of the park a celtic player (Ledley I beleive) was blatantly dragged down in the box, NO PENALTY! a typical crap ref descision during an important game.
There is no arguement against this, all you non-beleivers need to step out of the fog & see the reality of the biased descisions that occur within the Scottish game.
CFC 12 in a row! (once Rangers are rightly stripped of their tainted titles)
MOST INNACURATE ARTICLE EVER!
Sheesh
Time for a change of career as if this is the best you can write then there’s no hope for you and your deluded ramblings!
hey ‘dave’ for your next inciteful piece of drivel and alleged’facts’ why dont you investigate (with your lavish free time and energy) the ‘alleged’ cheating of rangers and winning of trophies, championships through financial doping. Then again, why dont you all just fade away….