Ibrox Noise was amused to hear Celtic finally admitting the referees in Scotland are effectively biased against Rangers and are patently pro-Celtic after their captain decried European referees as ‘a lot less lenient’.
The amusing little confession came off the back of Celtic’s latest European gubbing, a 2-0 loss in Feyenoord when down to 9 men, as Callum McGregor offered a comical admission about the murder Celtic get away with in Scotland:
“In UEFA competitions, the leniency isn’t very high.”
That can be translated to ‘we don’t get away with the nonsense on the continent that we do as a result of the utterly diabolic referees in Scotland’.
It was always so intriguing that Rangers’ run to Sevilla saw nothing but accurate refereeing and Rangers getting calls they just don’t in Scotland – things the referees spotted or, even more usefully, that VAR did, and justice being done almost every time.
Meanwhile Celtic, playing the way they do, with their influence on Scottish referees nowhere to be seen, aren’t getting the calls at that level that they do in Scotland.
It’s a very damning insight into the bias in Scotland or at very least ineptitude of the referees in this country that Rangers and Celtic have to play at a higher level to get the correct calls – and more often than not these are to the benefit of Rangers because we’re getting fair refereeing that isn’t courting one side or the other.
True, in Europe, UEFA will always want the big and attractive sides to go further, and once upon a time that was Barca and Real Madrid who got the rub of the green, these days it’s probably the English.
But at the lower levels, it’s all pretty even.
And poor old Celtic have to deal with referees who don’t favour them.
Life’s a tough old nut eh?