RONNY DEILA labelled Celtic's contentious William Hill Scottish Cup defeat to Inverness Caledonian Thistle as the "toughest day of his career" but then called for Josh Meekings to be shown clemency so the defender can appear in next month's final.
A Scottish Football Association tribunal will convene at Hampden today to decide whether Meekings should be given a retrospective one-match ban for denying Celtic a goalscoring chance when he handled Leigh Griffiths' header in Sunday's semi-final. The incident was missed by referee Steven McLean and the other match officials and Inverness went on to win the match 3-2 after extra time. Meekings will miss out on the final against Falkirk on May 30 should the panel not rule in his favour but Deila hoped that would not happen.
"It does not help our situation at all and I do not think he did it on purpose," said the Celtic manager, speaking after his team's 2-1 victory over Dundee that takes them eight points clear at the top of the SPFL Premiership. "It all happened so quickly and it is a clear handball, a red card and a penalty. But I don't think that is right for him to miss that match as you want all the best players to play in the final. I would hope that the ban would be overturned."
Celtic, with goals from Gary Mackay-Steven and Virgil van Dijk, bounced back from that setback with a comfortable victory at Dens Park, easing the pain of their manager who admitted he had spent the two days after the cup final "looking at a wall".
"It was the toughest day of my career on Sunday," he added. "We really wanted [the treble] and we had a very good opportunity there. So Sunday and Monday were very tough. But now it has gone. I just want to keep winning games and get that league title to Celtic Park. Then we have done a good season. I am very pleased with the performance. I'm proud of the boys. I told the players they should be very disappointed but winners bounce back.
"They have played so many games and of course the disappointment was there after 120 minutes on Sunday. They got rid of that and were ready for the game. We won it and deserved to win it. I was also very pleased for the fans who lifted us for 90 minutes. It was almost better than playing at home.
"It became a very good night and we have put ourselves in a very good position, eight points ahead with five games to go - and the goal difference as well. We just have to keep on performing and putting pressure on Aberdeen."
Paul Hartley, the Dundee manager, praised his team's efforts that included a late Jim McAllister consolation but felt they had not been helped by some "bizarre" decisions by the match officials.
"I thought we were good," he said. "We just lacked a little cutting edge. There were a couple of [referee] decisions that we weren't happy with. Some decisions were quite bizarre. I think they [the officials] are always under pressure but what's happened in the last couple of days meant the scrutiny was always going to be on them all the time. We understand they have a tough job in high-pressure games."
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