For fifteen matches a season, we watch sometimes good, sometimes bad and sometimes indifferent refereeing. And then, we have the games when Rangers and Celtic come to play, and normal rules go out of the window. Persistent fouling, as perfected by John Hartson is ignored. Simulation, or diving or cheating, as practised by Petrov and Bellamy is also ignored, yet the referee somehow managed to remember this rule when Amadou Konte stumbled and fell. Gary Caldwell made a fair tackle and was booked for his trouble. Even more farcically, Craig Bellamy was a good yard offside when he collected the ball in the run up to the third goal.

Now let’s get this in perspective. I’m not saying that these decisions, as dismal as they were, had any material effect on the result. They did not: our midfield was soft, and did not pick up Celtic players running through at the first two goals. This was not entirely surprising, because we were missing Stephen Glass, Guillaume Beuzelin, [for the first half anyway], Antonio Murray, Kevin Nicol and Kevin Thomson through injury. Craig Rocastle has also sadly departed.

Another personal concern of mine is in the centre of defence. Now, I probably won’t explain this very well because I think that Ian Murray, Gary Caldwell and Gary Smith are all very good defenders. I also think all three have played very well throughout the season, but perm any two from three and there is something missing: I’m not sure I can quite explain it properly, but as central defensive partnerships go I think something is missing. Aerial presence? At the same time we kept six clean sheets in eight games, that’s testament to Moby and Venus’s defensive organisation. I wonder if Chris Hogg might just be the answer to that particular conundrum.

Whilst I worry about our last two games, I’m not that worried. I’m sure we’ll come good again once some of our midfielders are fit again. Only a week ago, everything seemed fine: maybe Stephen Glass is more important to our team than some people realise.

We’ll be back.

Bobby S

As an aside, did anyone watch the thing on BBC1 the other Sunday about Rangers/Celtic and bigotry. Some Rangers bloke talked about “90 minute bigots” and, at the time, I thought, yeah, you’ve got a point. But then I thought about it some more. Would it be okay to be a “90 minute racist”? I presume the phrase was a copy of Jim Sillars “90 minute nationalist” quote several years ago. Whilst there’s nothing particularly offensive in being a nationalist; bigots, fascists and racists are inherently offensive.