As capable as this side is of being their own worst enemies, with the penalty miss being a perfect example, I thought today was characterised by two absolutely absurd decisions.

The first was to chop off the Celtic goal that Kasper Høgh put in the back of the net for an alleged foul.

The second was John Beaton’s even more inexplicable decision not to give us a penalty kick when he was standing watching the incident in which the Kilmarnock player clearly handled the ball in his own area.

Now, people will give Beaton the benefit of the doubt because he gave it eventually, but he had to be overruled by VAR before he did. But he also has to sign off on the decision to disallow the goal and he’s got that completely wrong.

I think serious questions need to be asked about how a Grade One official doesn’t know that’s a penalty kick at first glance, and who thinks that’s a clear and obvious error to give the foul and chop the goal off. It’s a joke.

Beaton has form for this, having made decisions on the pitch which can’t possibly be defended, only for VAR to overrule them.

Today he’s done one of each.

Now, I am happy when VAR is doing the job it’s there to do in those cases, but Beaton shouldn’t be getting away with making those decisions, both of which have gone against us on a day when he had easy decisions to make.

That VAR so often has to intervene on our behalf when this guy is refereeing games is pretty shocking.

And although VAR got the disallowed goal absolutely, completely wrong there is no mitigation for him because he’s got the final say. The penalty is crystal clear and he gives a free kick outside the area.

He’s got a perfect, unobstructed view of it. It clearly is inside the box.

But once again, in a situation where he has an opportunity to deny Celtic something, he does so.

We are masterful right now at making our own lives more difficult than they have to be. That’s just a fact, and everyone who watches us knows that it’s a fact.

We’re not playing well.

We’re not a really effective team, and the fact that the manager chops and changes the side so much, the fact that he changes so many elements of the team every game now, which he claims is about rotation, but which I actually think simply comes down to his not knowing what his best eleven is, means that we never get any kind of rhythm.

We never get any kind of momentum about the side.

As Killie proved very effectively in the first half at times, we are vulnerable. We’re vulnerable whenever any side goes forward and tries to play.

We are our own worst enemies right now. And on an afternoon which I said would come down to which manager gets fired, it is Martin O’Neill who survives.

Not triumphs, not walks six inches taller, but survives.

I don’t feel much like talking about the game. You’ve probably noticed that. I don’t feel much like discussing another insipid performance.

But even if the game had been a banger, even if the game had been all action and all goals for Celtic, even if it had ended in a very clear, very definitive victory, I would still be talking about John Beaton.

I would still be talking about his refereeing. I would still be talking about his inability to spot clear incidents that involve this club.

Because we see so many instances of it now. We see so many examples.

And yeah, the oft-repeated wisdom is that it is up to us to be better, to make the officiating irrelevant. But that’s like asking you to play against twelve men every single week. It’s untenable, and no club should have to do it. No club should have to put up with that.

And we’re expected to.

Expected to, as if it’s nothing.

One of the oldest and most discredited tricks of Sevconia is to look at the foul, free-kick and yellow-card count. Their players got plenty of yellow cards today, and it’s almost as if this somehow proves that we’re treated better than other clubs.

But not every foul is a booking. Not every free kick given results in a yellow card.

If it did, you would never get a game that finished with eleven men against eleven men on the pitch.

So I’m not accepting that explanation for some of what we see. It’s not an explanation for some of what we see.

Most of the time, when players get booked against us, it’s because they deserve to be.

And McCann, in his desperation to try to get something out of the match, made sure that they roughhoused us today every chance they got.

Look at Mika Bauer having to go off at the end with that injury. It’s ridiculous.

I know McCann’s team is fighting to stay in the league, although how much longer it remains McCann’s team depends on the tolerance that the Kilmarnock board has for this guy.

I mean, we weren’t good today, but they were not good either.

And although there were points when it did not look as if it was the top club playing against the bottom club, the fact remains that we are top and they are bottom.

But it’s the roughhousing of our players that makes the decision to chop off Kasper’s goal, for example, all the more ludicrous.

Because if that’s a foul, players can get penalised all the time in games.

That’s two guys trying to outmuscle each other for the ball, and the little guy in the Celtic shirt happens to be the one who wins.

So it’s a scandalous decision to overturn that. And yet the penalty manages to be worse.

That guy clearly handles the ball. He’s clearly inside the box when he does it. And Beaton attempts to give it as a free kick outside the box.

He’s kidding himself, and he’s kidding us, if he thinks he can get away with that.

I think both decisions are equally bad, by the way.

And then we’re here talking again about Beaton.

There’s no surprise on a day when we’re just not very good, though. There’s not a lot else, anyway, to talk about.

The feeling of a club that is stuck in the mud, or in some kind of weird, bizarre holding pattern whilst we wait to see what happens next, is still very, very apparent.

And we don’t know that anything is going to happen, of course.

For all we know, this situation is going to stabilise into some kind of horribly static form, and we’re going to limp through the rest of this campaign one way or another with this management team in charge.

January will tell us a lot.

And my advice to people all along has been: don’t get excited, don’t expect too much, don’t expect it to bring deliverance of any sort.

But still people are waiting for it. And maybe they’re right and I’m wrong.

Time will tell.

But this is what we’re doomed to watch until then.

Not exactly earth-shattering excitement, is it?

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