Celtic lose second Auston Trusty red card appeal

Trusty will now serve a THREE match ban, with two games for the violent conduct charge and an extra one on top because he has already been sent off in the same competition – the Scottish Premiership – in the match against Hearts at the end of January at Tynecastle.

Martin O’Neill certainly didn’t sound like he had much faith in any appeal being successful and all that this latest misstep from Celtic has done is cost the club a further £650 – that’s £1300 more spent on pointless appeals than the club spent in the January transfer market.

So the American International defender will sit out the double header against theRangers at Ibrox in the league and Scottish Cup and also the match against Motherwell at Celtic Park in mid-March which hopefully will be the game when the Green Brigade return to their rightful place at Paradise.

Trusty meanwhile is free to play in the Europa League dead rubber in Stuttgart on Thursday night in a match which Celtic could do without. Hopefully VFB Stuttgart feel the same way and it’s a non event 0-0 draw and we can all move on.

Martin O’Neill, after the 2-1 defeat to Hibs had this to say about Auston Trusty: “I’ve spoken to Auston. At the end of the day you can’t do this if they’re the rules now. It doesn’t matter if someone is holding onto you in an attempt to break away. You can’t thrust in the manner he did to get away.”

Celtic would have been better off forgetting this latest Trusty appeal altogether as it was always doomed to fail and instead should have sent an angry letter to the Scottish FA about the penalty incidents that VAR failed to address at the weekend and also on the reason shown on the screens at Celtic Park saying that the foul was outside the penalty area. No Hibs players were outside the area to commit a foul.

Martin O’Neill and Shaun Maloney will already have plans in place to replace Trusty in the team on Sunday and playing Kieran Tierney in a central role as Ordinary Bhoy suggested on The Celtic Star last night is far from the worst idea.