For months now, on the websites of the opposition, one utterly stone stupid opinion has been voiced over and over again; that Celtic are against the implementation of VAR because refs are in our pocket and we don’t want to rock the boat.
Ibrox looks at their decisions in Europe – and the sheer number of them has been unbelievable – and they think that this automatically translates into the same type of decisions going their way here in Scotland.
And they think Celtic are opposed to the policy as a result.
The bizarre theory on their websites takes a number of crazy forms.
My favourite is that we will vote in favour of it but rally our “allies” to vote against it, thereby making sure it is never implemented and that we will do this by way of bribery; players on loan and lucrative friendly games.
Can you imagine the break with reality needed to believe that?
The truth is, we have been VAR’s most vocal backer since the debate began.
It is a wonder to me that even they are capable of denying the truth of that.
Because their club – late in the day – has swung behind it, they assume automatically that we must be against it … they really are a demented bunch of folks. Yet it doesn’t change the reality of it.
The news today that Celtic – and their own club – will have to pay outsized shares of the cost proves our commitment to reform. That our club is willing to carry much of the costs, to keep lesser clubs from having to pay more, is something we should get credit for.
But will we? I don’t care about Ibrox; their fans are clowns.
Will we get the respect that this gesture is due from other clubs? They moan constantly about the decisions they don’t get against us and we’re now paying to make sure that they get a fairer shake from the worst referees in Europe. Managers and directors elsewhere think we special favours … instead of calling out this lunacy we’re actually supporting changes like this.
I think we deserve a lot of credit for it, and I hope that when the deal is done and the vote is taken and the measures are passed that some people have the good grace to thank us for it.
We are about to prove our ultimate commitment to real reform.
VAR won’t sort the problems of refereeing in Scotland. It may even add to them with some bigot in the VAR Review rolling the footage back to a more/less favourable moment.
I’m quite happy for Celtic to chip in the lion’s share both next season and realistically every season thereafter. Let’s face it Old Firm FC is fvcked from now on.
A generation of domination and jelly and ice cream are very much back on the table.
This reminds me of the season we gave Queens Park money to help transform Hampden, and they built a cover at the rangers end of the stadium.
I find the way the variable payment for VAR being reported is another example of the MSM being invested in creating a click bate, adversarial , tribal paraniod culture in Scotland. if they had reported that ” ALL TEAMS PAY 5% OF THE PRIZE THEY RECIEVE”. Then people would understand that it is fair. The Teams who win more will obviously pay more. This was not the purpose of the “Variable Scale payment” story.
Of course, VAR won’t suddenly solve all the issues on the park – but it is a significant step in the right direction.
The SFA and SPFL are rotten organisations, so any effort to impose modernisation on the game is no bad thing either.