CALL THEM OUT- Celtic fans chief O’Rourke pleads with Nicholson to take action on culture of honest mistakes
Joe O’Rourke has called on Michael Nicholson to go public with Celtic’s criticism of match referees.
Yesterday’s 3-0 win over Dundee was accompanied by some first half decisions that were beyond baffling.
Twice from corners during the first half Cameron Carter-Vickers was manhandled in the penalty box, firstly from Trevor Carson then seeing that he got away with it Joe Shaughnessy joined in to wipe out Celtic’s most attacking threat from a corner.
Sky Sports were able to highlight it but Greg Aitken on VAR didn’t even pause the match for a proper review. Play continued with the first half ending goal-less.
On the Celtic Supports Association website O’Rourke writes:
Don Robertson had the type of match that we’ve come to expect from him, officials like him are part of a major problem in the Scottish Premier League, I cannot think of one match official who I think is fair and impartial, I cannot think of one match official who hasn’t favoured Sevco, for them to go seventy three League games without conceding a penalty is unbelievable (think I missed a letter out there).
Now, I speak to Michael Nicholson regularly about officials, and he assures me that they continually question the authorities in that respect, but it’s time we went public on the situation with match officials.
Every match we play in Scotland, I go to extremely confident of winning, the only reservation I always have is the match officials, they can, and do have a negative affect of Celtic.
At this year’s AGM questions on refereeing issues were put to Nicholson and Peter Lawwell who joked back about the issue, to the amusement of the mainly elderly shareholders.
While cracking the gags Celtic main domestic rival is on a 73 match run of SPFL matches without having a penalty awarded against them.
A run that covers one year of VAR, three new Ibrox managers, three UK Prime Ministers and one change of UK monarch.
It seems that patience among supporters about the softly softly approach is wearing thin, as everyone knows the time to highlight and go public with these issues is after a win but with Lawwell around there is no chance of Celtic rocking the boat inside the SFA.
? “Penalty Rangers”
Celtic chief Michael Nicholson’s cutting reply when quizzed on referees and VAR at AGMhttps://t.co/6vJYJ8p66Ihttps://t.co/6vJYJ8p66I
— Scottish Sun Sport (@scotsunsport) November 22, 2023
