SFA chief Maxwell puts silent Nicholson in his place

Ian Maxwell has put Michael Nicholson back in his place with the Celtic chief sticking with his vow of silence.

While the SFA go public on certain issues Nicholson hasn’t said a word outwith the Celtic AGM other than briefing certain favoured media outlets.

When a ‘goal’ by Jota was mysteriously disallowed against Motherwell then justified by a long distance image there was a lot of noise on social media about what had gone on over the decision.

Following the opening day fiasco at Tynecastle where Celtic were denied a penalty and a Liel Abada ‘goal’ was disallowed without any supporting image or graphics the criticism was becoming overwhelming.

David Friel of The Sun again scooped the news that Celtic were looking for clarification but after a bizarre statement on the SFA website Maxwell followed up by explaining what happened to The Herald on 30th November.

That was an interesting one because nobody is actually saying Jota was offside or the decision was wrong. The angle looks strange but that doesn’t really matter because fundamentally the decision was right and that is what it is meant to do.

There was an issue with the camera angle, it wasn’t wide enough to capture the ball and the individual, so we had to use the camera at the other end of the pitch.

Thankfully, the Hawkeye system saw this coming and that’s why both cameras are calibrated to deal with offsides the length of the pitch, in case you get a technology failure or a human error. It just looked a bit strange, but the outcome was right, we got the right decision.”

With no response to that from Celtic, fans will have to wait until the 2023 AGM for the thoughts of Nicholson although the events of January 2 might take priority.

At the 2022 AGM Nicholson revealed that the CCTV at Ibrox wasn’t working when glass found it’s way into Joe Hart’s penalty box during the half-time interval.