The reaction of opposition managers to Celtic’s recent wins against Hearts, Ross County and Hibs have followed a common theme: that Celtic reaped the benefit of crucial decisions. There was no acknowledgement by either Robbie Neilson, Malky Mackay or David Gray that Celtic were by far the better team in each of these games.

Nor was mention made of controversial decisions elsewhere in two of these games that went against Celtic. At 1-1 Ross County were provided with an opportunity to win the game when the referee reduced Celtic to ten men by the harshest possible interpretation of the law. In doing this, the official stood accused of failing in his duty of care to a player with a head wound.

As Hibs shouted loudly about a possible penalty there was nothing afterwards about two incidents in where penalties should have been awarded to Celtic. In one of these, Kyogo Furuhashi was wrongly adjudged to be offside while being illegally impeded as he reached for a cross.

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In the Hearts game it simply cannot be proven beyond reasonable doubt that Kyogo was offside as he converted Tony Ralston’s cross. On the opening day of the season though, when both these sides met there could be no doubting that a second Celtic goal was wrongly called offside or that Andy Halliday made a red-card challenge on Callum McGregor. Curiously, the Hearts manager had little to say about a controversial decision that went against his team at Ibrox earlier this month.

You’re left with the impression that each of these managers know they have a limited shelf-life at the very top. And that their hysterics in games against Celtic are mere performance art for the purposes of embellishing future job applications.