Hugh Keevins: Flagging up a furore

The words were softly spoken. The manner was undoubtedly conciliatory in nature.

But when Brendan Rodgers addressed the subject of the goal scored by Scott Sinclair against Airdrie on Saturday that was ruled out for being offside there was no doubt that it was the verbal equivalent of an iron fist contained within a velvet glove.

"The linesman, bless him, he's in a really good position and those are the ones you've got to see, there's no doubt in that," the Celtic manager said after the game.

Sinclair actually has to run beyond an Airdrie defender to score what would have been a goal to give him his hat-trick so the decision is laughably bad.

If you're of a mind to laugh at that kind of thing that is. The problem is it was a mistake drawn from a litany of howlers made by match officials in Scotland this season.

Rodgers was able to put his point across in a mild mannered fashion because the cup tie was easily won and there was no damage done, other than to the reputation of the assistant referee who was found seriously wanting.

But there is a large element contained within the Celtic support who will not be deflected away from the notion that match officials do this kind of thing deliberately because they are determined to hinder the club's progress in whatever competition they happen to be playing.

There was even the recent case of a former Celtic player prepared to state in print that there was an official conspiracy designed to make certain that Celtic did not win Ten in a Row.

In order to make history by recording that achievement Celtic would first of all have to win Eight in a Row this season, which brings us to the point.

The league title race resumes after the Winter break on Wednesday night with Celtic at home to St. Mirren and Rangers away to Kilmarnock.

The league table is finely poised with the two Glasgow clubs on the same number of points and Celtic having a game in hand, which offers the promise, but not the certainty, of a three point lead over Steven Gerrard's team.

To say that tension is rising would be a grotesque understatement. To add that the decisions made by match officials will be under scrutiny as never before is merely to state the bleeding obvious.

Forget all about the meeting held in Perth last week between the Premiership managers and the referees that was designed to bring about a more harmonious relationship between them.

Brendan Rodgers gently reminded a match official at the weekend that he was incompetent.

Gerrard took just one game in charge of Rangers to say there was a long standing problem between his club and faulty decision makers.

Both clubs have issued public statements on the subject of their concerns over officials' mistakes during matches this season.

We have now arrived at that stage of the title race where the efforts of the players could be outdone by the inadequacies of the officials handling their games.

It is simply an undeniable fact that Scottish match officials are better at being bad than those to be found in any other country.

It has nothing to do with corruption. For instance, you could argue that some referees might not have given Celtic the penalty which Andrew Dallas awarded against Airdrie on Saturday evening.

But it has everything to do with being inaccurate under pressure.

There was a former referee who used to argue that there were soft boiled eggs and then there were hard boiled eggs, but they were boiled eggs all the same.

It was his jocular way of shooing away arguments over hotly contested penalty kicks.

By the same token, there are innocent mistakes and honest mistakes, but they are mistakes all the same.

And there are far too many of them for all teams in all divisions every week of the season in this country.

That's why there is an allowable degree of fear that, beginning on Wednesday night, growing tension at the top of the league table is going to lead to human error from officials, as opposed to human excellence from players, deciding the outcome of the championship.

It is a terrifying prospect in a country where intolerance is the defining characteristic so far as football is concerned.

You can't simply tell errant match officials to be better than they were last week any more than you can tell them to be taller, thinner or better looking.

They are what they are and what they are at the moment is unsatisfactory.

They don't mean to be that way, they just are.

But now the stakes are incredibly high.

Rangers have devoted a fortune they don't have to the job of stopping Celtic in their tracks.

Celtic failing to win the league would create disruption on an industrial scale inside the club.

I shudder to think what it'll be like if all of this is decided on dodgy decisions, but the possibility exists because we have arrived at where we are partly because of dodgy decisions.

There have been rank rotten performances from Celtic and Rangers into the bargain, and neither could deny that being the case, but the thread running through the season has been unsatisfactory, unhelpful

inefficiency on the part of match officials.

We must now close our eyes, cross our fingers and fervently hope that the problem does not prove to have a material influence on the outcome of the league title.

"Honest" and "Mistakes" are two words long ago removed from Scottish football's lexicon.

Welcome to our world

• Hugh Keevins