Moussa Dembele’s late goal took the pressure away from Craig Thomson after yesterday’s Betfred Cup semi final at Hampden.
Thomson has had a miserable season to date and was ordered to Hampden to explain his refusal to co-operate with BT Sport during the St Johnstone v Celtic match.
Rather than keep the broadcaster in the loop the FIFA ref decided to kick off the second half early forcing the broadcaster to cut short an advertising break.
Yesterday’s mistakes were more hands on and brought back memories of 2009 when Thomson refused Aiden McGeady and Shaun Maloney clear cut penalties during Tony Mowbray’s first visit to Ibrox as Celtic manager.
At Hampden Thomson’s moment in the spotlight arrived in the 48th minute.
Erik Sviatchenko kept his eye on the cross coming in from the left and shrugged off the despairing attention of Clint Hill.
As he directed the ball low and into the net to Matt Gilks left hand side the defender spun away to celebrate with Hill lying on the deck.
There was no signs of a claim from the Sevco defence but for reasons best known to himself Thomson blew for a foul against Sviathenko.
Watching the match for BT Sport Sutton wasn’t really surprised by the decision, it’s not exactly the first time Thomson has made a decision that defied logic.
Sutton felt that Leigh Griffiths may have been offside at the Celtic goal but was in no doubt about the validity of Sviatchenko’s goal.
Writing in the Daily Record the former Celtic striker said: “If Celtic got a bit of luck with the offside decision then it certainly evened things up after Erik Sviatchenko’s perfectly good goal was wrongly chopped off.
“I don’t want to get into a situation where I’m panning Craig Thomson all of the time but he had an absolute shocker.
There has been a kerfuffle about referees this season. What are we asking? All we are asking is that they get the big decisions right and once again he didn’t do that.”
CLICK HERE for five classic images from Hampden.
CLICK HERE for Chris Sutton’s devastating Hampden tweet
CLICK HERE for summer signing target pictured at Hampden.