BITTERLY DISAPPOINTED at Celtic’s flat, lacklustre performance in blowing our Scottish Cup and treble prospects today. Certainly, the appalling, indefensible, disallowed stonewall first-half penalty incident was THE pivotal point in the match; but our own under-performance resulted in us being harried and out-fought all over the pitch by a dogged ICT, who, by contrast, played above themselves on the day and will feel they got what they deserved over the piece.

That’s highly debatable but not worth wasting breath on.

Disappointed overall, then, yes … but FLABBERGASTED, FRUSTRATED  and EXASPERATED at Celtic’s constant loss of footing throughout a painful 120 minutes. You might’ve put it down to the vagaries of a freshly-laid and possibly over-watered new pitch if the problem had been mutual – but unless I’m very much mistaken, Thistle didn’t seem to have any such issues with the surface.

It even cost us a potential winner when Griffiths slipped and tumbled when presented with an open, point-blank scoring chance on the end of one of our all-too-few fluent attacking forays.

It has to be asked, whose responsibility was it to ensure that the players were appropriately shod for the prevailing underfoot conditions … and why was there no remedial action at half-time when it was so blatantly obvious there was a problem?

When our ‘A-game’ is so heavily dependent on sure-footedness, speed of thought, decisive execution and high tempo, it just has to be asked.

Dear, oh dear …

JOHNBHOY