SFA appoint Lanarkshire based referee for Celtic v Motherwell

John Beaton will be in charge of Saturday’s SPFL match against Motherwell, his first Celtic fixture of the season.

The Lanarkshire based referee took charge of a match between the two clubs at Fir Park in February with his last Celtic fixture the Glasgow derby in May.

With Bobby Madden moving to England Beaton seems to be sharing the top fixtures this season with Nick Walsh and Don Robertson who have both handled two of Celtic’s first seven SPFL Premiership matches.

The 40-year-old has been involved in a number of controversies involving Celtic, in January 2019, a week after a controversial Glasgow derby the club announced:

Celtic Football Club is surprised that there will be no disciplinary action taken by the Scottish FA regarding the incidents during the match on December 29, which have been widely addressed in the media. 

It is reported that no action was taken because the match referee saw all of the incidents in question. 

Given that the referee took no action at the time, this tends to suggest that such conduct, which in one instance led to a Celtic player, Anthony Ralston, being injured, is acceptable in Scottish football. That cannot be right.

On the day, Celtic did not play well enough to win the match, something we accept. However, this issue goes beyond the result of the match.

Celtic is not the only club this season to raise concerns regarding the standard of officiating at matches in Scotland, concerns which have also been shared by many commentators on the game.

In order to fully understand what is going on, Celtic, our supporters, Scottish clubs and the general Scottish football public need transparency in these matters, and we therefore call on the Scottish FA to allow the referee, John Beaton, to explain these decisions publicly as well as any match officials involved in other similar circumstances.

In the meantime, we have requested a meeting with Scottish FA Chief Executive, Ian Maxwell, and the Association’s Head of Refereeing.

There was no follow up to that statement with Beaton regularly in charge of Celtic matches including the 2020 Scottish Cup Final against Hearts.

After a fraught international break full of injury concerns Ange Postecoglou should get most of his squad back together tomorrow to prepare for the Motherwell match.

That fixture kicks off a hectic run of fixtures that involves 13 matches between October 1 and November 13.

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