No doubt aware of recent events and sensing a chance to climb the ladder, Kevin Clancy was at the heart of two highly controversial incidents as Motherwell drew 2-2 at home to Phil Clement’s exciting young team.
To the surprise of absolutely no-one both decisions favoured one team, the club that has been firing off statements about all matters refereeing including comments on who gets appointed for matches involving other clubs.
With Ian Maxwell back on his winter holiday there has been no sign of any Disrepute charges being made while Willie Collum goes the extra mile to ensure that match officials understand the current circumstances.
Clancy knows the script, that is why he made it through to take charge of four Glasgow derbies, Celtic losing three of them. After a 20 month break yesterday’s display puts him back in contention to referee one of the remaining Derbies this season.
But pushing with both hands during the same phase of play is OK though eh ? pic.twitter.com/xXLQfLGHM3
— Ali Murray (@Alimurray_) December 30, 2024
Having already conceded a soft opening goal Jack Butland was having the sort of performance that made him third choice at Crystal Palace a year ago.
Hamza Igamane had pulled a goal back to make the scoreline 2-1 when Motherwell won a corner on the right.
Andy Halliday swung a bread and butter corner into the six yard box where a nervous Butland swung a fist and punched the ball into his own net.
There wasn’t the slightest claim for a free kick but Clancy spotted something with the ‘goal’ disallowed and restarted with a free kick.
On VAR duty Steven McLean wasn’t going to disagree by suggesting that his colleague reviews the incident on the pitchside monitor.
There was minimal contact between Butland and Tony Watt, if anyone was the aggressor it was the £30m rated goalkeeper. At every corner kick there is an element of contact, for his own reasons Clancy made the bar incredibly low yesterday.
Ten minutes later Igamane equalised.
Elbow by Cerny should have been a red.
No red shown. pic.twitter.com/8gTIPYWLCI— Lint (@Zeshankenzo) December 29, 2024
Anyone with a passing knowledge of football would know that Vaclav Cerny is by far the most talented player in Phil Clement’s squad.
Brought in on loan from Wolfsburg ahead of the SPFL opener away to Hearts the Czech internationalist has scored 10 goals this season. Clement has been highly dependent on the on-loan winger, without him the stats for this season would be even bleaker.
Rested for the match at Motherwell Cerny was brought on at half-time to save the day, he did have a positive impact but deep into stoppage time his discipline deserted him in an incident with Watt.
As the Motherwell forward was running back into position Cerny raised his left elbow to hit Watt in the face. The incident was in clear view of the Fourth Official and Assistant Referee who both decided to allow play to continue.
Sky Sports provided two long range views of the incident which Clancy apparently missed, on instructions from somewhere he decided to book both players.
A red card would have ruled Cerny out of the next match- at home to Celtic on Thursday.
RELATED READING
