David Tanner has claimed that Celtic made eight requests to Hibs to change the date of their recent home match before invoking a little-known rule in order to make their training trip to Dubai.
The former Sky Sports anchor-man now enjoys a variety of media roles including hosting Hibs TV and making occasional reports on Scottish football for TalkSPORT.
Following yesterday’s media dramas and clearly looking to stir up controversy and interest, The Sun reports Tanner saying:
The whole thing has been entirely of Celtic’s making and now they are lashing out in an attempt to divert attention away from themselves. That is the kind of whataboutery I expect from knuckle draggers on Twitter.
Bear in mind they were supposed to play last Saturday against Hibernian. but the game was moved to Monday. They rode roughshod over due process, Celtic, because they asked Hibernian eight times to move that game to Monday night so they could go to Dubai.
Eight times Hibernian said no. So Celtic went to the SPFL, who invoked a rule that many hadn’t heard of. They should have heard of it in fairness, but they hadn’t heard of it, and they moved the game.
Now Hibernian were furious about that. That right away was a disaster area, but they [Celtic] lost at Ibrox. Neil Lennon said they were the better team. But try telling that to the guy who engraves the trophy at the end of the season.
With a rule in place it seems highly unlikely that Celtic would have made eight requests for a fixture being put back 48 hours. Neil Doncaster recently explained the SPFL process that put the match back.
If Celtic hadn’t gone to Dubai they would almost certainly have had a full strength squad for the match with Hibs. With Gavin Strachan in charge and 13 players self isolating it took a stoppage time goal from Kevin Nisbet to earn the visitors a draw.
Tanner is regularly invited onto Celtic’s Zoom media conference calls.