Quote:
Aiden McGeady's recent displays are reaching new heights in a season in
which he has been Celtic's most consistent and enjoyable player to
watch.
His double drag back on Sunday against Aberdeen and wonderfully inviting
chip to Scott Mcdonald at the far post was a sublime moment of combined
skill and audacity. Pure brilliant.
The concerning thing though about McGeady's performances this season
have been the seemingly inexplicable interventions by referees to book
McGeady for the most innocuous of challenges. Sunday was a case in
point.
McGeady's first real physical encounter (that's probably overstating it)
of the game led to Craig Thomson immediately pulling a yellow card out
of his top pocket and waving it firmly in McGeady's direction.
Quite rightly McGeady simply looked bemused and chose to argue the
point. He could cleary be seen holding up one finger (not the middle one
thankfully) to Thomson and repeating the words 'One tackle'. The
decision to book him was diabolical.
But what is worse is that this booking simply followed on from at least
half of his bookings this season being completely unwarranted or the
fouls he committed being of lesser severity than some of the things
going on elsewhere in those games. To date he has picked up 7 bookings
this season in 21 games. A booking every 3 games.
Now we all know that bookings come in a variety of different forms for
dissent, bad tackles, deliberate handball or persistent infringements.
But McGeady's play this season has not warranted anything like the
number of cards he's received.
The SPL official website compiles their own statistics on a range of
things which include player discipline. Remarkably they can tell you the
top 12 players conceding the most fouls as the season progresses. Given
that no other player has received more bookings than McGeady this season
you'd reasonably think that he would figure in the top 12 of players
conceding fouls. But he's not even on the radar. Top of the list is
Hibernian's Colin Nish with 61 fouls followed by Aberdeen's Lee Miller
with 50 fouls. These players have picked up 6 bookings each for their
fouls.
Our own Scott Brown who it has to be said has put in a few mistimed
challenges to pick up a booking or two has committed a total of 38
fouls.
So how can McGeady be booked 7 times as a player who simply doesn't play
in a position that is likely to lead to bookings through a higher ratio
of fouls? Very odd to say the least.
It's also noticeable that a certain captain of a certain club down Govan
way has not picked up one single booking in the SPL this season. This
despite the fact he can be regularly seen dishing out dissent to
referees, and not long back was aiding and abetting one of his team
mates in a decapitation attempt on an opponent using the knee.
So McGeady stands as the player with the highest number of bookings
received this season along with Chris Innes of Gretna and Hugh Murray of
St Mirren.
Perhaps Gordon Smith would do well to look at the sheer inconsistency of
refereeing decisions as one of his future 'initiatives' rather than
spending time banging the drum about simulation (that's diving to me and
you) which is not really a large blight on the scottish game. Perhaps he
can explain why McGeady has been faced with yellow cards from so many
referees this season without much in his play to warrant such a number
of bookings.
Or perhaps that's too big a can of worms to be opening for the Chief
Executive to be able to explain away.
Apologies for the full quotation of an article, but I've no link for the original. If I find it on the net, I'll cut the article to the relevant points
