Celtic lost 2-0 against Heart of Midlothian in the Scottish Premiership on Sunday and failed to move to the top of the table.
The Bhoys went down to ten men after Yang Hyun-Jun picked up a red card for a reckless challenge on Alex Cochrane. The referee initially booked him with a yellow card but the decision was overturned after checking the pitch side monitor.
Don Robertson changed his mind and flashed out a red card, a decision which was criticised by Brendan Rodgers as also BBC Sports pundit Neil McCann.
Tomoki Iwata was penalised for a handball in the area which looked like an extremely harsh decision as he was looking in the opposite direction.
Dermot Gallagher said on Sky Sports that he thinks the decision to send Yang off was correct. The 66-year-old also thinks that while Iwata was harshly punished for a handball, he feels such decisions are given nowadays in Scottish football.
Chris Sutton took to X to share his reaction. He describes it as a “wooden, rigid thought process” and that the whole incident wasn’t looked at.
“Dermot Gallagher giving credit to the officials for awarding penalties similar to the one Iwata was penalised for yesterday pretty much sums up the wooden, rigid thought process when looking at incidents such as these north of the border… the whole incident wasn’t looked at,” wrote Sutton.
Controversial decisions
Celtic had a glorious opportunity to move to the top of the table after Rangers lost 2-1 against Motherwell on Saturday.
The two decisions have completely turned the match in Heart’s favour. McCann has rightly pointed out that there was no malicious intent from Yang, and the referee should have stuck with his original decision.
Unfortunately, he caught the face with studs and that’s why a case can be made. However, the penalty decision was really harsh.
Sutton is absolutely spot on that the whole context wasn’t looked at. Celtic will have to forget about it and turn their attention towards the game against Livingston in the Scottish Cup quarter-final on Sunday.
