James Scott and that goal

Having now seen the full incident, I think it was completely wrong for Stephen Robinson to place any implication of blame on James Scott (or any of our players) yesterday.

Obviously at the time it all goes quickly, it's hard to remember details and he probably just wanted to diffuse the situation and get out of dodge. Fair enough.

But with time to reflect and watch the replay I hope he's come to a different opinion. He will inevitably be asked about it in his pre-matcher for Kilmarnock and he should be coming out with 100% backing for the team.

Of course he needs to back the team but it's correct that he should be pressed about the incident. To me it seemed that the lad was the only one of the sixty thousand who did not realise that he was expected to return the ball to the opposition. Rush of blood to the head.

We'll never know what he was thinking at that moment but I have absolutely no idea why we should be expected to give them the ball back. It's bad enough it happens at all but if you're going to do it you need to do so straight away.

The notion your player goes down, you attack, get nowhere, then when the opposition start to press you just knock the ball out the park and expect it back is utter madness. Imagine if Celtic had scored with their attack, what would have happened? Hee haw about about sportsmanship that's for sure. They chose to play on - as they should - but then we get to do so too.

The easy solution is players should, in 99.9% of cases, just leave it to the referee to stop the game. An exception can be made for head/neck injuries or if there's a bone sticking out the ref hasn't spotted...but essentially the referee can decide and we avoid this farce.

What it boils down to is this. Should a team put the ball out of play, or return it to the opposition, if one of their players is to be subbed for injury reasons ie not for treatment? Christie had already received treatment on the sideline.

Back to basics. Was the player in need of attention ? if so stop the game. If not play on.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by choccy1314

Back to basics. Was the player in need of attention ? if so stop the game. If not play on.

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Probably not. He had received treatment off the pitch (going off under his own steam) but then returned as Celtic didn't have a sub ready to come on and they didn't want to play with 10 men. His remit was to delay proceedings until the sub could come on.