Deliberately fanning the flames of a dangerous fire- Jackson accuses Rodgers
Soccer Football - Champions League - Group E - Celtic v Lazio - Celtic Park, Glasgow, Scotland, Britain - October 4, 2023 Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers REUTERS/Russell Cheyne
Keith Jackson believes that Celtic’s defeat from Hearts was almost all of their own doing.
The veteran Daily Record reporter sat in on a tactical tutorial from Rodgers last week but was decidedly unimpressed by the team selection and formation played at Tynecastle yesterday.
Losing Callum McGregor in midfield was a major blow but if it wasn’t for two incredible decisions prompted by John Beaton and implemented by Don Robertson the outcome of the match would have been very different.
Playing with 10 men for 75 minutes makes a huge impact on a team, having a penalty awarded against them for the most dubious of handballs in another handicap.
Throw those two issues together and most teams are going to end up losing, true there were plenty of areas that Celtic could improve on, that falls on Rodgers but there is an expectation that the Laws of the Game are applied in the same manner in every match.
Jackson takes a different view, in the Daily Record he explains his take on yesterday’s events:
That they failed spectacularly to get the job done was almost all of their own doing, even if manager Brendan Rodgers jabbed one accusatory finger in the direction of ref Don Robertson and another even more forcibly towards John Beaton in the VAR bunker.
By naming Beaton on more than one occasion in his post match media duties, Rodgers was deliberately fanning the flames of a dangerous fire. Yes, between them, Beaton and Robertson may have reached a number of fairly unfathomable decisions. And, true, the calls they collaborated on had a material impact on the match.
But, by pinning the blame for this latest slip up solely on the officials, Celtic are distracting themselves from an inconvenient truth.
Rodgers has his inconvenient truths to deal with all week at Lennoxtown and solutions to find in the remaining weeks of the season.
Going on past form the SFA will remain on mute even though Hibs and St Mirren have both had apologies from them in recent weeks.