Legend backing Celtic stance over Aleksandar Tonev

We all know what has unfolded since then, but what I would say is there was no ongoing antagonism throughout that game between the players and no lingering bad feeling.

Yet, we have been faced with a situation where two men have given their recollection of the same event.

It is impossible to know who is right and who is wrong, and for that reason, Celtic have done the right thing in standing by their player.

And before there is a rush to claim that is because the player in question is playing for Celtic, let me insist I would take the same view were the situation in reverse.

It was an interesting move on the part of the SFA to release its findings in full and show the reasoning behind an SFA Judicial Panel decision to uphold the judgement they came to back in October when they handed out a seven-match ban to the Bulgarian.

And the bottom line is simply that convicting someone of such a grave offence on the "balance of probability" seems very weak to me.

There seems scant evidence to support the judgement, and to make a conviction based on one man's testimony being more believable than another's, seems tenuous in terms of hard evidence.

Like many, I would look at it as an outsider and question why Shay would claim something like that was said during a game if it hadn't happened.

But I can see why Celtic are irked by the decision because there is no way to prove what is a very serious allegation - and could have massive repercussions for the player.

We have sometimes seen lip-readers brought in and this can shed light on similar situations, but there hasn't been enough hard facts presented in this case to merit standing the allegations up.

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