Craig Thomson’s nightmare season continued at Pittodrie last night as his decisions decided the outcome of Celtic’s visit to Aberdeen.
Two key moments dominated the match with both of them going against Celtic. In the 12th minute of the match Virgil van Dijk brought down Peter Pawlet, did the Dutchman deny the midfielder an obvious goal scoring opportunity? Thomson thought so and a red card was shown.
Despite being down to ten men Celtic dominated the second half following the half time introduction of James Forrest.
Looking for the breakthrough goal Adam Matthews launched a throw-in deep into the Aberdeen penalty box.
When Andy Consodine nervously heads the ball across goal Mark Reynolds sticks out his arm to ensure that the loose ball doesn’t fall to Leigh Griffiths- penalty? Not according to Thomson who either made an honest mistake or was too badly positioned to see the incident.
Either way it explains why Scotland’s leading referee will once again be watching the World Cup from his home this summer.
Discussing those incidents Neil Lennon said: “I thought we were worthy of the win. I thought the referee ruined the game. It’s not a sending-off. Pawlett was going across the goal rather than towards the goal. I’m pretty sure Ambrose would have got across.
“And there was a clear handball in the second half. He saw it and said it wasn’t deliberate.” Since their January jolly to La Manga the standard of refereeing has fallen even further with managers enraged on a weekly basis.
With Willie Collum, Bobby Madden and Brian Colvin challenging Thomson for the title of Scotland’s best referee it’s likely to be a long wait before a Scottish referee appears at the World Cup or is given a knock-out match in the Champions League to apply their own interpretation of the laws of the game.
The SFA recently employed Dougie McDonald in a training post for emerging referees.
Brazil 2014 will be a better place without this myopic clown.
Well said,Martybhoy.
Just heard Mark Wilson ( player ) say,on
radio, it was not a clear goalscoring opportuniy,as Efe was round to cover.A
yellow card in his opinion.
Where there is dubiety,refs err on the
side of caution.
As opinions differ on Virgil’s red, Thomson
was too quick to show a red card, and
made an error.
He was also lenient in dishing out yellow
cards to the home team.
Robson was late,on a few occasions.No
yellow.
Flood done Biton,no yellow.2 minutes later,an even cruder tackle,on Izzy,and gets a yellow.
Flood should have walked.
Virgil deserved the red card. The penalty was fifty fifty, I can see why he didn’t give it. To be honest, its stupid to blame the referee in this instance, Van Dijk has to shoulder his fair share of the burden for losing our winning streak.
Quack,
I wouldn’t say Mark Wilson is stupid.
I would take his opinion before yourse.
As he described it,with sound judgement,
he makes sense.
Unlike you quack,with your post,very much in the quackers category.
Everyone is avoiding the real issuse because Van Dijk has been the golden boy this season. But he made a mistake on Tuesday night. Theres no two ways about it.
As the great Jock Stein once said…if we are good enough the referee doesn’t matter.
We weren’t even close to being good enough, dominating 2nd half in which Aberdeen simply sat back and allowed us 1 shot at goal…Keeper had hee haw saves to make.
me thinks quack a dob as is thomson
James,
Well spotted.
I saw through him straight away.That’s why I called him quackers.
Sad posting on a good Tim site.Think he
should be discussing,with his fellow Zombies,Sevco going.bust.
Disgraceful, going to them depths just because I see it differently.