Precedent set over ‘Butland assault’ – Joe Hart wants a word

And for those of you who haven’t been paying attention, it’s the ‘incident’ involving Auston Trusty and Jack Butland which saw Celtic’s American centre-back receive a caution after a near his boot tapped the Ibrox keeper’s head.

Trusty went for the ball, realised he was off with his timing and showed great reactions to stop himself inflicting harm on theRangers shot stopper. The tackle was deemed not to be reckless and he was correctly issued with a caution. It’s really that simple, as several replays indicate.

Willie Collum has backed his officials for their handling of the incident, deeming it worthy of the caution it received at the time, case closed, or so you would think. In the VAR footage released referee Nick Walsh tells Raskin of theRangers that he doesn’t know the rules and that is his problem not the referee’s.

But the howls of injustice have been growing louder by the day as the Ibrox club and their supporters play the victim card in a bid to disguise their own failings, all aided by the ever so willing Scottish media who quickly dismissed the Reo Hatate stonewall penalty that Celtic were denied in the same game.

This has led to the Ibrox club and its many minions in the media pushing the narrative that a ‘precedent’ has been set by Collum and his officials in regard to what they claim as ‘assault’ on their goalkeeper. It wasn’t an assault and the incident is covered in the current rules of the game, which in this instance the referee, VAR and Willie Collum as Head of Referees all got correct.

Celtic supporters on social media however, have  rightly point out the indecent two seasons ago at Tannadice when Joe Hart was on the end of a worse ‘collision’ that saw him left with a bloody wound, for which the offending player received just a caution. Butland carried no visible signs of the collision on his face, here’s a photograph of his after the game to prove the point.

And what about that time the same player was intentionally put in harms way at Ibrox after already broken glass was deliberately thrown across his penalty area at half-time in a heated Glasgow derby, an incident that saw the Ibrox club go unpunished and one that they still have to apologise for.

Wasn’t it a case that both those unpunished incidents set a ‘precedent’ that assaulting goalkeepers was fair game?