Have you ever seen so much furore over a corner before? I mean ever?
The last time I saw this kind of reaction was when Roy Aitken stole a throw in and Celtic won the Scottish Cup. But a corner?
I mean, come on. And I still can’t believe it is being talked about to this day.
I suppose when all the BBC want to do is analyse the backside off every contentious referee decision Celtic gets whilst ignoring the ones that other clubs get, it is easy to build that narrative.
Ange Postecoglou was asked about that corner in today’s press conference [Celtic FC YouTube] and what he said was very interesting.
Whilst distancing himself from debating too much about the refereeing standards, he took a broad swipe at the Scottish media’s analysis of our games and how they ‘clutch’ onto the refereeing mistakes to build a narrative about our league table position, “I don’t want to get into that too much.
“I mean, it seems a lot of the analysis of games here are just more referring watch than analysis of the actual game.
“Yeah we got a corner we maybe shouldn’t have. But does that mean if we don’t get a corner that we should next time that means we will miss out on a goal?
“I mean there’s still a hell of a lot of things that need to happen for us to score from that resultant corner or resultant throw in.
“But you know, it’s very easy for people to look for those kind of clutches.
“I’ll let that storyline run because that means probably people are ignoring actually what we are doing and the way we’re playing if people think we are in our position because we’re getting favourable decisions by the officials then more power to them.
“We’ve just kept doing what we’re doing. What’s important to me, I’ve said that around officials all year is that they are human beings.
“If I have to make an assessment I’ll say players and managers have made a lot more mistakes than referees this year.
“The only time I’ll speak about officials is if I feel like players aren’t getting enough protection or if they miss stuff that impacts more than just a game.
“I get people saying well, I hope we get VAR come in because it will help the officials, absolutely, but that’s not foolproof either.”
And called this 100%.
And it is an answer that typifies the man. Not one has he looked at blaming referee’s or lack of VAR if results don’t go our way.
Not once has he used the referee’s as an excuse for dropping points or being knocked out of Europe or for any other reasons that managers of other teams use.
There is a lot of managers in our top flight that would do well to take a leaf out of Ange’s book.