The Steven McLean and Liam Kelly incident that Nicholson, Lawwell and the SFA can’t ignore

On Wednesday at the club AGM Michael Nicholson and Peter Lawwell were cracking jokes when questions were raised about the competence of Scottish referees.

Most of the elderly audience laughed at their banter, most but not all.

On Thursday Nicholson attended a meeting arranged by the SFA to discuss VAR, on Friday it was revealed that an independent panel had reviewed 407 incidents and found that only three errors had occurred. To date no club has questioned the Review with Dundee commenting that they were disappointed to have been on the wrong end of 67% of those decisions.

Yesterday, at home to Motherwell Celtic were woeful. Playing without purpose, aimlessly retaining possession with Motherwell happy to filter back into defence knowing that their opponents had little punch in the important areas of the park.

The ball went aimlessly down the wings, played back, square across the defence, then pointlessly down the other flank with the Motherwell defenders facing up to whatever crosses came in.

81% possession and four shots on goal is grim reading, that is on Brendan Rodgers and for him to deal with.

However good or bad you play you are still entitled to have the Laws of the Game applied, for whatever reasons Steven McLean was unable to supply that yesterday.

Yer no allowed to do that mate ? pic.twitter.com/inDie3g3Ao

— Fitzy (@Fitzy__07) November 25, 2023

Just past the hour mark the incident occurred, it seems that McLean and his North Stand assistant completely lost the plot.

Firstly Liam Kelly handled the ball outside his penalty box, denying Celtic a goal scoring opportunity which should have resulted in a red card.

Realising what he had done Kelly kicked the ball back into the penalty area then fell on top of the ball, clearly a back pass.

McLean and his assistant took no action, play continued, no free kick to Celtic, Motherwell having 11 players to complete the final 30 minutes of the match.

Rodgers is responsible for Celtic’s pathetic 90 plus minutes, Crawford Allan is responsible for appointing a referee unwilling to apply the Laws of the Game. Even for the Celtic CEO and Chairman it is not a laughing matter.