If The Tavernier “Elbow Ball” Isn’t A Penalty, How Could Those Against Celtic Be?

I wrote earlier about VAR and its nefarious impact so far.

But I was asked to comment on one specific incident, the Tavernier “elbow ball” which VAR looked at and then casually dismissed.

Is it a penalty? Well, let me put it this way; if that ball comes off Juranovic at Ibrox then I would put every penny I have on the spot kick being given, and that’s answer enough.

The rulebook is so open to interpretation that we’ve already fallen victim to softer decisions than that whilst at least one which was even more stonewall was denied Hibs last Friday.

As I said earlier, don’t let anyone pretend this is inconsistency. It’s very consistent, so much so that you could make a fortune betting on the pattern of it. As long as the Usual Suspects are making these decisions, then they will continue to flow in one direction.

If some of the ones given against us are penalty kicks then of course that was too. But this is where the can of worms ought to be open and nobody in our press corps appears to want to get the lid off it.

The very people who are supposed to ensure that our game is corruption free – that is, those are supposed to hold those in charge to account – don’t want the job.

And it doesn’t help when managers don’t, and won’t, help themselves.

Goodwin was so busy feeling sorry for himself at full time that he accepted the seven minutes as probably being fair when anyone could see how ridiculous it was, and he didn’t mention the decisions at all.

How many times have clubs been the recipients of astonishingly bad decisions at Ibrox and come out to the media to say “this is what happens when you visit Glasgow …” as though some of the more egregious ones would have gone in Celtic’s favour.

If you ask me, Tavernier’s one edges out of 50/50 because he used his arm to deflect the ball.

That seems fairly straightforward to me when you watch it. This wasn’t just one that deflected off him; he clearly uses his arm to direct the flightpath of the football, and that makes it deliberate and if the rules do now say that neither hand nor arm are to be “used” in that manner then it’s a much more obvious one than the ones we’ve already suffered.

The only difference is in the interpretation of officials, and I strongly suspect that has more to do with the colour of the jerseys than with anyone’s view of the rulebook.

Of course it was a penalty, if for no other reason than that 100 times out of 100 it would have been given against us.

I don’t even doubt it for a second.