Two weeks of fixtures for the high price you pay to access all the data on this site – insert a sarky emoji here.
This takes us up to the Scottish Cup matches and both sides have played 29 SPFL matches.
The impact of big calls being incorrect can then be evaluated using the framework outlined here -> Honest Mistakes in the SPFL.
28/02/24 Celtic vs Dundee
Incident 1
| Referee | Matthew McDermid |
| Game Minute | 76th |
| Score At Time | 7-0 |
| Incident | Robertson fouls Johnston |
| Outcome | Foul to Celtic and 2nd YC to Robertson |
| Evidence | BBC iPlayer – Sportscene – Premiership Highlights 2023/24: 28/02/2024
At 36:38 |
28/02/24 Kilmarnock vs The Rangers
Incident 1
| Referee | David Dickinson |
| Game Minute | 11th |
| Score At Time | 0-0 |
| Incident | Lundstram blocks a cross into the box |
| Outcome | Penalty awarded to Kilmarnock for hand ball |
| Evidence | BBC iPlayer – Sportscene – Premiership Highlights 2023/24: 28/02/2024
At 17:17 |
| Yorkshire Whistler Verdict | Initial on field decision: Handball awarded and penalty given to Kilmarnock
Lundstram jumps and spins with his left arm to block the cross and the ball does seem to hit him on the elbow. Even though his arm isn’t significantly extended outwards, there does appear to be an element of unnatural positioning of the arm and body shape as a result of this spin. Once the ball hits his elbow his arm, it then seems to extend out even further, although this happens immediately after the ball hits the elbow. Given the unnecessary body spin and loose left arm as a result, I would support the call to award this as a handball offence. |
| Expected Points
Outcome |
No impact |
Incident 2
| Referee | David Dickinson |
| Game Minute | 39th |
| Score At Time | 1-0 |
| Incident | Polworth tries to run onto a Diomande back pass |
| Outcome | No decision |
| Evidence | BBC iPlayer – Sportscene – Premiership Highlights 2023/24: 28/02/2024
At 19:16 |
| Yorkshire Whistler Verdict | Initial on-field decision: No foul committed
As Polworth attempts to latch onto an under-hit back pass, he claims that Diomande pulls him back as he runs passed the Rangers man. I would categorise this as justifiable contact from the defender as he puts his arm out for only a split second and there is no obvious pulling-back motion committed. His left arm comes out slightly to block Polworth, but I would say this just about sits within what is deemed to be expected player-on-player contact. Verdict: CORRECT DECISION |
| Expected Points
Outcome |
No impact |
Incident 3
| Referee | David Dickinson |
| Game Minute | 79th |
| Score At Time | 1-2 |
| Incident | Donnelly goes down in the box |
| Outcome | No decision |
| Evidence | BBC iPlayer – Sportscene – Premiership Highlights 2023/24: 28/02/2024
At 22:43 |
| Yorkshire Whistler Verdict | Initial on field decision: No foul committed
Donnelly & a Rangers defender both compete to get to the ball first, it looks like the Rangers defender is just behind Donnelly who feels contact and goes down in the box looking for a penalty. I do not see the defender make any obvious attempt to tackle or challenge Donnelly and certainly nothing that warrants a clear infringement. Again, I feel we are in the realm of expected, justifiable contact to compete for the ball and space around the ball. No foul was committed. |
| Expected Points
Outcome |
No impact |
Incident 4
| Referee | David Dickinson |
| Game Minute | 87th |
| Score At Time | 1-2 |
| Incident | Ball hits Findlay in the box |
| Outcome | No decision |
| Evidence | BBC iPlayer – Sportscene – Premiership Highlights 2023/24: 28/02/2024
At 23:21 |
| Yorkshire Whistler Verdict | Initial on field decision: No foul committed
Dessers and Findlay both go to play the ball and the ball bounces up and clearly catches the defender accidentally on the hand. However, this contact occurs due to the ball bouncing up which gives Findlay virtually zero reaction time. His arms appear to be in a very natural position as he challenges the Rangers forward and I would have been bewildered if anyone had deemed this to be a handball offence. Verdict: CORRECT DECISION |
| Expected Points
Outcome |
No impact |
02/03/24 The Rangers vs Motherwell
Incident 1
| Referee | Alan Muir |
| Game Minute | 35th |
| Score At Time | 0-1 |
| Incident | Carey and McCausland challenge for the ball |
| Outcome | Foul to TRFC |
| Evidence | https://x.com/ScotlandSky/status/1764625959561396567?s=20
At 0:43 |
| Yorkshire Whistler Verdict | Initial on field decision: Foul to Rangers, no further action after review.
Carey and McCausland both compete for a loose ball and Carey fully commits to a sliding tackle, which sees McCausland fall to the floor injured in the aftermath. At full speed, my instinct was a good strong challenge that saw Carey robustly win the ball first, before his follow-through made contact with the Rangers man. Upon watching the replays, I stick by my opinion that this is a strong but fair challenge. I suspect that if McCausland fully commits to the 50/50 challenge he is ironically, less likely to injury himself. It appears that at the last second, he changes his mind to commit to the tackle (in old school terminology – he doesn’t fancy it) and turns his body and dangles his right leg out. Carey’s follow through after winning the ball, then catches this loose leg of McCausland, which wouldn’t have happened if the Rangers had made a stronger effort to tackle Carey. I find it hard to look to penalise Carey in this particular scenario and actually disagree with the on-field decision to award a free kick in the first place. Verdict: INCORRECT DECISION. No foul was committed. |
| Expected Points
Outcome |
No impact |
Incident 2
| Referee | Alan Muir |
| Game Minute | 56th |
| Score At Time | 0-1 |
| Incident | Silva goes over in the box |
| Outcome | No decision; Penalty to TRFC upon VAR review |
| Evidence | BBC iPlayer – Sportscene – Premiership Highlights 2023/24: 02/03/2024
At 6:10 |
| Yorkshire Whistler Verdict | Initial on field decision: No foul but after VAR review, penalty awarded to Rangers
Silva breaks into the box and under the challenge from Casey & O’Donnell goes to ground. I suspect the referee is unsighted to O’Connell’s challenge and feels body on body block from Casey, on its own, is not enough to warrant the foul. However, on review, you can see that Silva plays the ball first before O’Donnell’s sliding tackle catches him & not the ball, a split second before Casey collides with the Rangers forward. For me, the sliding defender makes no contact on the ball but does catch Silva and a foul is committed. Verdict: CORRECT DECISION to award the penalty |
| Expected Points
Outcome |
No impact |
03/03/24 Hearts vs Celtic
Incident 1
| Referee | Don Robertson |
| Game Minute | 11th |
| Score At Time | 0-0 |
| Incident | Yang goes down in the box |
| Outcome | Penalty to Celtic |
| Evidence | BBC iPlayer – Sportscene – Premiership Highlights 2023/24: Hearts v Celtic
At 3:00 |
| Yorkshire Whistler Verdict | Initial on field decision: Penalty awarded to Celtic
Yang looks to get in behind the Hearts defender Cochrane and they come together shortly after. Yang goes to ground and a penalty is awarded to Celtic. At full speed my initial reaction was that there was expected contact between defender & attacker and no clear foul had been committed by the Hearts man. I thought Yang stepped across the Hearts defender and initiated the contact by impacting Cochrane’s running stride. However, on reviewing the replay, it does appear that Cochrane does actually stretch to play the ball and as Yang has got his body in front of Cochrane, the defender’s stretch makes no contact on the ball but clips Yang’s right foot. On that basis, I’m happy to support the on-field decision to award the penalty. Verdict: CORRECT DECISION to award the penalty |
| Expected Points
Outcome |
No impact |
Incident 2
| Referee | Don Robertson |
| Game Minute | 16th |
| Score At Time | 0-0 |
| Incident | Yang and Cochrane challenge for the ball |
| Outcome | Foul to Hearts and YC to Yang upgraded to RC after VAR review |
| Evidence | BBC iPlayer – Sportscene – Premiership Highlights 2023/24: Hearts v Celtic
At 4:09 |
| Yorkshire Whistler Verdict | Initial on field decision: Foul to Hearts and Yang cautioned. After VAR review this is upgraded to a red card to Yang.
Yang attempts to control a high ball with his foot as Cochrane attempts to head the ball. At full speed it appears that Cochrane wins the ball first before Yang’s studs catch him in the face. I do have some sympathy for Yang as he doesn’t seem to be aware of how close Cochrane’s head is as he attempts to play the ball. However, Yang’s right foot is fully extended at neck height as Cochrane arrives to head the ball. Once Yang makes contact with Cochrane’s head at this height, I would say this falls in the territory of serious foul play and endangering a player’s safety. On balance, I would support the decision to upgrade the foul to a sending-off offence. Verdict: CORRECT DECISION to issue the red card for the offence. |
| Expected Points
Outcome |
No impact |
Incident 3
| Referee | Don Robertson |
| Game Minute | 43rd |
| Score At Time | 0-0 |
| Incident | Johnston clears the ball and it hits Iwata |
| Outcome | No decision; Penalty to Hearts upon VAR review |
| Evidence | BBC iPlayer – Sportscene – Premiership Highlights 2023/24: Hearts v Celtic
At 8:12 |
| Yorkshire Whistler Verdict | Initial on field decision: No foul, but then after VAR review, penalty awarded to Hearts for a hand ball offence.
Harsh decision to deem the accidental hand ball as a punishable hand ball offence. Even though Iwata’s arm is slightly extended, he is in a jumping motion and gets barged mid-flight by his teammate. This then causes his arm to involuntarily extend in mid-jump. I feel this is a justifiable body movement specific to that situation. As such I disagree with the penalty decision and feel the referee’s initial ‘no foul’ decision should have been the expected outcome. Verdict: INCORRECT DECISION. No foul handball offence was committed. |
| Expected Points
Outcome |
Celtic -0.54 xPts |
Summary
My thanks as always to the Yorkshire Whistler.
In the main another good week for the officials.
However, John Beaton’s decision to ask Don Robertson to overturn a non-decision to a handball penalty for Hearts was not only inexplicable but potentially material to a very tight and lucrative title race. Given the game state and the fact Hearts were struggling to break down a 10-man Celtic in front of an increasingly agitated home crowd, it carried additional weight.
In terms of the overall position:
The Rangers have 0.53 MORE points and Celtic 0.83 less than expected due to the impact of Honest Mistakes. The Rangers are benefiting by an estimated 1.36 xPts due to the impact of honest mistakes.
The Rangers lead by two points after 29 matches.
Are you sure the Yorkshire Whistler isn’t a Currant Bun?
Lol
He annoys all sides, which is what good referees do – and by good i mean unbiased in this context
Now ask him to ref Sheffield United fairly and that might be a different matter 😉
Having seen various people giving their opinion on the decisions, people such as the whistler who know the rules and what they are talking about, (not over paid idiot pundits who do NOT know what they are talking about) most of them would be in line with the decisions of the whistler. Yang made the wrong decision and it cost us the game, he constantly makes the wrong decision on the park, this was just another one which has cost us big time.
I have a different theory about why Beaton MIGHT have asked the ref to have a look at the hand ball which led to the penalty. Look what happened with Collum when he never asked the ref to look at the handball when we beat rangers, yes it would never have been one because the player was offside, but look what happened because they thought Collum should have at least flagged it up. Maybe Beaton was just covering his own rear end by asking the ref to look at a potential penalty, or maybe he was cheating ? who knows, pretty sure the ref made the decision to give the penalty, not Beaton.
wrt Yang, the issue for me is what ‘clear and obvious error’ did Robertson agree he had made. Although he’s a bit away, it looks like he has a clear unimpeded view, albeit 2 players are close to him, and its not a fast moving action., so he should’ve been able to make the right call first time.
There’s clearly no excessive force, so is it simply Beaton overruling his colleague and, if so, that’s the issue.
BTW Yang’s initial attempt to control the ball was abysmal leading it to spin over his head and shouldn’t have been compounded by challenging for the ball that high. Forbye that, he was great last Wednesday and it seems to be very harsh to single him out for our indifferent season.
wrt Collum, he judged that it wasn’t a penalty, as had the referee, so there wouldn’t be a VAR review in those circumstances.
Where they messed up with introducing the offside element thinking it would placate the crazies ‘even if we thought it was a penalty, which we don’t, it wouldn’t have been given due to the prior offside’.
‘Placate’, ‘crazies’, do they not see the problem?
The ref didn’t give the penalty on Sunday and when the ball went out for a throw-in, he stopped the game for prompted VAR review.
This was the correct protocol, it was just the judgement that was faulty.
Scottish football is corrupt for one club only and they play at cheating liebrox thats the only way that scum club can win anything is buy cheating and there masonic officials Beaton.Dickinson. Walsh.Dallas they are the main refs who let newco away with murder..CHEATS OF SCOTLAND RANJURS AND THE RANJURS 2012..
Re the Lunsdtram / Kilmarnock penalty.
This is absurd.
“there does appear to be an element of unnatural positioning of the arm and body shape as a result of this spin”
His arm is not extended outwards at all. Remarkably so, given he is jumping.
The arm flies out after contact, excusing the referee of blame, to be fair. But not VAR.
Everyone who has seen the freeze frame (which the VAR of course has access to) of when the ball hits the arm says no penalty.
Until now.
Curious.
126. Serious foul play. A player is guilty of serious foul play if he uses excessive force or brutality against an opponent when challenging for the ball when it is in play. A tackle that endangers the safety of an opponent must be sanctioned as serious foul play.
Not sure if this is the up to date version, but I think it’s obvious the first part is not met (Yang was actually leaning back not moving forward and the momentum came from Cochrane). As regards the second part, studs to the face could of course endanger an opponent, as could an elbow, or a fist, or a head, but ultimately, without any force or momentum the worst outcome possible is much less likely to “endanger” someone and indeed didn’t on this occasion. One thing that seems to be a bit of a problem here is that a high foot / studs is automatically seen as endangerment, where I believe this was an instance where the opposing player was not endangered by a high boot because of the lack of force and whilst I understand “endangerment” is subjective, to me it was a long way away from clear and obvious. Don Robertson seen the height of the boot in real time, awarded a Yellow Card and there was therefore very little reason for a VAR review if you apply the rules correctly.
Lastly, when Kyogo and Alistair Johnston were knocked clean out, there were no red cards and I believe I am correct in saying the Yorkshire Whistler did not think that the opposing player should have been sent off in either incident, and both clearly endangered the players involved – so this seems patently wrong to me as there was excessive force, momentum and a level of brutality involved by aggressively moving towards the ball at speed, so is the argument that because it wasn’t a boot that did the damage on these occasions, it was not endangering the opponent (which both clearly did)?
I see the “Yorkshire Whistler” now becomes the only person – who is not, we are assured, a celtic fan – to think Yang’s penalty for Celtic vs Hearts was the correct decision.
Curious.
Again.
Think he needs a closer look at that red card for Yang
Cochrane knew èxactly what he was doing and threw his head into the boot… and missed
but at the same time made it look like he took the head off him
No review of the Roofe incident in the Motherwell game?
What was that then that was missed by social media, the BBC and SPFL highlights? Link to video please.
Hi Alan, first off your work here and in the podcasts is second-to-none and the insight you provide on Celtic is the benchmark in how to think about the game.
I’m loathe to dip into this, probably primarily because I miss having a Celtic team that obliterated officiating inconsistency…alas…
During the earlier days of this Honest Mistakes series you would often cite how everyone has an unconscious bias, and that’s why the YW would be unencumbered here – no skin in the Celtic game. However, there’s a disregard of a very obvious unconscious bias which is the YW is a former referee and what I see as a tendency to take the final decision and base his working on the famous old SFA trope ‘I can see why it’s been given’.
This leads the TW to support the red card of Yang, for a careless but innocuous shoulder-height graze with the boot (no momentum, force, the other player can see exactly what Yang is doing etc.)…whilst also supporting the decision to award a yellow card when a player launches his head at speed into the back of another players skull rendering the blindsided victim unconscious before hitting the ground. In the Kyogo/Rubezic incident the YW absolves Rubezic by saying both players have eyes on the ball…but says Yang doesn’t seem to be aware of how close Cochrane’s head is. This seems inconsistent.
I do concede that Yang not knowing where an opponent is, is problematic in this instance, however this still squarely lands the offence in the yellow card variety – literally this is the IFAB guidance:
• Careless is when a player shows a lack of attention or consideration when making a challenge or acts without precaution. No disciplinary sanction is needed
• Reckless is when a player acts with disregard to the danger to, or consequences for, an opponent and must be cautioned
• Using excessive force is when a player exceeds the necessary use of force and/or endangers the safety of an opponent and must be sent off
To me it suggests that the YW follows the same worn path of all retired refs of working toward justifying the decisions/giving benefit of the doubt to the officials.
The only thing I could suggest would be to show him the incidents without the final decision. Perhaps you do…if so…then I still find the aforementioned head to the back of skull the most disturbing.Which all really brings me to two thoughts:
1. In spite of the very generous way in which you and the YW approach these – only dealing with big issues shown on BBC, not really scraping at the trends and micro-decision making – there is still a visible curve in the data to a specific outcome. That’s troublesome
2. As it relates to the Yang/Rubezic challenges and their respective impacts – I think about the spirit of the game often. The spirit of the game, particularly in Scotland, is somewhat different from my rosy-tinted play-good-football perspective. Summed up when a yellow card is deemed sufficient for a defender using his head to leave one on an opponent (resulting in a concussion), whereas a winger (ill-advisedly) trying to control high bouncing ball with his foot.
Most of all – thank you for the measured, thoughtful and quality output from you around Celtic Alan, it’s hugely appreciated. As it happens I was very enamoured with you narrow diamond 4-1-2-1-2 suggestion until Taylor’s struggles on Sunday…
Appreciate this post
A very reasoned argument. Compelling even,
Interesting article as always and I thank my colleague for his time. I’m impressed with the level of the debate in replies too, suggesting that perhaps readers of this series are getting au faith with the laws of the game. This to me can only be a good thing.
I’m glad I am no longer alone in being baffled by why the Silva penalty was deemed controversial. I was expecting to look at the highlights and see Tom Daly going by the forums… But it was a clear foul.
For me the Yang one is the old orange card situation. I can see an argument in 2024 for it being red. I can see a (more intuitively correct) decision for it being a yellow. It was stupid by Yang to put his foot up there but there was no force or speed and had no contact happened it would’ve been an indirect free kick only. For me the issue is whether it was so obviously a red as to warrant a VAR enforced review of a yellow (similar in my opinion to the Maeda red in Madrid). The mere fact I’ve called it an orange card should tell you my answer to that.
This was not clear and obvious serious foul play, and an observer would probably call it a “supported decision” in any report. Which roughly means “I don’t agree that this was the correct decision, but it’s somewhat subjective and the ref argued his case.”
Other than that, not really anything I’d disagree with YW about here. I really can’t understand the hearts penalty review by VAR as, again, it was not a clear and obvious error that the on field ref missed.
Again I think the future of VAR is reducing scope, allowing access to the conversations (for VAR reviews only) and putting the footage up on the big screen. We also need strict protocol about speed of playbacks and use of still images, as these massively affect how something looks. This is a football wide thing, not just Scotland. As always, look at rugby now and that’s where we will be in 10 years.
“This is a football wide thing, not just Scotland. As always, look at rugby now and that’s where we will be in 10 years”
God!..I can only hope so, but I don’t believe it.