Brendan Rodgers slammed the Motherwell players and management over the sportsmanship controversy at Celtic Park today.
Seven minutes into the second half Celtic put the ball out for a throw in to allow Ryan Christie to receive treatment with the convention being that the ball gets returned from the throw in.
Motherwell opted to take advantage, the ball went to James Scott who headed for goal, squared to Gboly Aribiyi who popped the ball into the net.
Speaking to Radio Scotland after the match Rodgers said:
A really disappointing act on a football pitch, my players had a really tough game on Thursday playing for an hour with ten men then they came into a tough game today against a team that is doing very well.
We got 2-0 up, really good goals to have control of the game and then to have that goal against. Sometimes up here the referees get criticism but the criticism goes to the players, it wasn’t a good act at all.
Motherwell after that had the chance to redeem themselves, maybe let us score but it wasn’t the case. They decided to play on, they wanted to try for an equaliser and that’s why I’m so proud of the team.
They then showed, not just their qualities but their guts, their determination, players out of position, young players like Ewan Henderson who was brilliant today.
To go on and get the 4-1 win, was so proud of them, my only disappointment is that it is a goal against us, they have been heroic in what they put into games and take pride in not conceding.
Rodgers was then asked if he expected Motherwell to concede from the restart, he addeD:
Yes, absolutely, you see it, it’s there to be done, everyone could see that it’s a goal that should never have stood. They had the chance to do something about it but unfortunately for the game that didn’t happen.
After a lengthy delay Celtic restarted the match against a chorus of booing from 50,000 home fans.
With the game pegged back to 2-1 the points were in the balance until Odsonne Edouard scored with a free kick nine minutes from the final whistle.
Celtic went on to score a fourth goal to ensure that they restored their eight point advantage at the top of the table with that one incident overshadowing everything in the match.