Cowardly SFA chief praises Clement after his club’s campaign against Collum

Crawford Allan has praised Philippe Clement for calling in the paranoia from his employer!

Following the defeat to Celtic at the end of December the Ibrox club went on an incredible course of attack culminating in the call to have Willie Collum removed from all future fixtures.

The Lanarkshire based official won’t get near another SPFL match involving the Ibrox club this season but was put in charge of the Scottish Cup tie against Ayr United as the SFA tried to prove a point.

While the Ibrox club used their media messengers to demonise Collum the SFA sat in silence, back in December 2021 Allan, Head of Refereeing broke off from a holiday to join Kenny Macintyre on BBC Sportsound after Kris Boyd and Robbie Neilson got upset about a goal from Celtic.

More than a month after the campaign against Collum was launched Clement claimed that it wouldn’t happen again which was enough for Allan to jump in and praise the Ibrox boss.

The Herald reports Allan saying:

 I know from speaking to Willie privately over the last few weeks, and during that week, that he was grateful and happy with the level of support the Scottish FA gave him, privately and publicly.

We don’t want to make any massive headlines from one referee. It doesn’t matter if it’s one person’s name out there, it affects all the referees. We have to protect them all.

I have had a similar request from a club in tier 5 recently, asking that a referee didn’t do their games. I think they were potentially jumping on a bandwagon.

I read with interest last week that the Rangers manager was supportive of William and I thank him for that. It was well received and was the right thing to do.

It is a pity that the SFA didn’t support Collum by hitting Clement’s employer with a disrepute charge.

Since the campaign against Collum both John Beaton and Allan Muir have beeen in charge of two matches involving Clement’s club.