The Bobby Madden facts

Once again Bobby Madden turned in some baffling statistics during Celtic’s goal-less draw with Livingston.

At the start of the month he managed to award 27 fouls against the hoops away to Aberdeen despite Ange Postecoglou’s side having 61% possession, just 10 fouls were given against Aberdeen.

Celtic were way off form yesterday and rarely looked like scoring, not even when they were awarded a penalty kick in stoppage time.

There were a number of strange decisions throughout the match, in the first half Nicky Devlin received two minutes of treatment on the park, one minute was added by Madden.

The most striking stat to emerge was that Celtic had 85% possession but matched Livingston foul for foul with 10 awarded against each side.

Giving a very generous 60 minutes of actual play that equates to Celtic being in possession for 51 minutes.

A Celtic player was fouled every five minutes. With just nine minutes of possession Livingston players were fouled every minute that they were on the ball. Effectively Celtic’s boot boys were fouling their opponents five times more often.

The SFA has selected 16 referees to take charge of Premiership matches this season, Madden has had three of Celtic’s four matches to date.

Specsavers sponsor Scotland’s referees.