Brendan Rodgers has revealed that he’s been surprised by a number of funny decisions made by Scottish referees.
In his first match in charge of Celtic John Beaton awarded Hearts a penalty for nothing with Jamie Walker given a two match retrospective ban.
When Celtic faced Sevco in the semi final of the Betfred Cup, Craig Thomson disallowed a perfectly good headed ‘goal’ from Erik Sviatchenko as veteran defender Clint Hill fell to the ground instalments.
Celtic’s recent run of three home matches against St Johnstone, Hearts and Aberdeen saw some brutal treatment handed out to Rodgers’ players with little sign of protection on offer from the match officials.
Today St Johnstone were on the wrong end of a horrendous penalty awarded by Craig Thomson with Rodgers using the incident to reveal his own concerns about refereeing standards.
“Lots of decisions that I see up here – and I have only been up a short time – are some funny ones,” he admitted to the Sporting Life website.
“As a manager I am absolutely delighted that I got it but from Tommy’s perspective he will be bitterly disappointed.”
Asked how he compared the standard of refereeing between Scotland and England, the Irishman said: “It is a difficult job. I am not going to go in to it here in front of you, to slaughter them.
“It is a difficult job for them and I have seen it in a lot of the games. They are not full-time, it is not their professional job.”
Today’s win takes Celtic 27 points clear of Aberdeen and extends their unbeaten start to the domestic season to 29 matches.