Although the club have accepted the SFA's penalty, they haven't gone as far as too say the forward cheated. Instead, they claim there was some contact but not enough to convince them it would be worth fighting the charge. They've also pointed out there have been previous occasions when Isma would have been justified in going down and hasn't.
The other issue they have raised is why Goncalves has been banned for two games when he would only have been booked had his "dive" been picked up on Sunday. I assume they reason for this is if a player dives, gets a penalty then is only retrospectively booked he - and other players - won't think twice about doing it again. If they're hit with a ban they might.
Personally I'm inclined to think it was a dive - and that it was outside the box. However, you do wonder if this would have been brought up had we not been playing Celtic. On the plus side, Neil Lennon has been pulled up by the SFA for his rant at Jim Goodwin. He plans to fight that and I'd imagine he'll be let off as it's the sort of thing that happens all the time, Goodwin even saying his response was even more foul and abusive!
The ban means Isma will miss Saturday's game against Motherwell and our first match after the split.
Story source: The Official St. Mirren Website
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