Another own goal from Football Scotland as they cook the books over SPFL penalty stats

Chasing the same declining demographic as their lead publication, Football Scotland has conjured up some figures to disprove the myth that Rangers get more penalties than any other club.

Except that the stats provided show that over the last six years the Ibrox club has had more penalties than any other club with Celtic the main rivals.

Rather than trust the reports from the Daily Record, Football Scotland has turned to Transfermarkt.com which strangely doesn’t include post-split fixtures in their stats, producing an SPFL Premiership season of 33 matches.

Over the six years covered the team that has finished runners-up five times has received more penalties than the champions.

Penalties awarded is only half the story of course, they can be awarded at the other end but Sunday’s match at Livingston made it 67 matches without a referee pointing to the penalty spot in the SPFL.

Kevin Clancy was the culprit in January 2022 at Pittodrie, soon after a letter of complaint from Ibrox to the SFA was leaked to Sky Sports which has served as a reminder to referees ever since.

The current run without conceding a penalty follows on from a 44 match run which ended at St Johnstone in April 2021 when Euan Anderson awarded the home side a stoppage time penalty.

Last season Celtic were awarded seven penalties and conceded the same amount, across the city the figure was Plus 10 as James Tavernier went through the 100 goals barrier.