Ian Maxwell continues to make the papers today, defending his organisation and their shoddy form of decision making.
His defence of VAR as “doing what it’s supposed to do” genuinely stunned a lot of us yesterday, and today he’s claiming that the Jota “offside” decision is correct and that it proves that the technology is working.
If I were him I’d give the lens a wipe and watch that goal again, because he’s not offside and nobody has produced a single camera angle or actual piece of evidence which will convince me that he was.
The SFA statement originally said that there was a malfunction. Today he’s telling us that, actually, the system worked fine and that it confirmed the decision.
I don’t believe a word of this. The longer it goes on, the more these people are tying themselves in knots trying to defend this decision and others. He is so casually dismissive of Celtic’s concerns that it’s insulting. Our club demanded answers. If the answers were as simple and as uncomplicated as he’s making out, we’d have had them on Day One.
Celtic needs to be chasing down these jokers, and making it clear that the furore over VAR is making this entire league look like a backwards environment run by yokels and clowns. Maxwell has done himself no favours, and he’s not done Scottish football any either, by quoting a mass of stats and trying to pretend everything is okay.
I can only repeat what I wrote yesterday and which every single one of us knows; Celtic has not gotten a single major call in our favour. On the contrary, every call has gone against us and some of them are blatantly wrong.
If that is a system that is working as it should be then we have serious cause for concern, concerns we have publicly expressed.
The people running our club are not mugs. Celtic has the SFA in the crosshairs here. VAR confers upon us one advantage; decisions which used to be defended on can no longer so readily be explained away.
This nonsense about the angle of the camera being wrong or the camera being trained somewhere it wasn’t supposed to be … this is a stroke these people can only pull once and that card has been played, to no effect.
We cannot let up on this. We have to keep the pressure on.
“. . . making it clear that the furore over VAR is making this entire league look like a backwards environment run by yokels and clowns.”
Methinks that you are too charitable to Maxwell. I am sure yokels and clowns could make a better fist of things than Maxwell and his cronies are managing.
LAWYERS!
Bring in the lawyers. There is corruption in Scottish Football and it is rooted in the SFA. It needs called out as it was before by men of great integrity, in Fergus McCann. and Mr Turnbull Hutton (God rest him). If Turnbull was still with us I am certain this would have been bravely called out as I knew the man personally. We owe it to his legacy and to Fergus.
What the hell is wrong with our Board? What are they waiting for.
What indeed is wrong with the Boards of all the other clubs? They are spineless!
It is obvious where the corruption lies, who benefits and who condones it.
Maxwell is lying and everyone knows it. If not, he would produce the evidence but he can’t because it isn’t there.
He and the rest of the brithers are just too stupid to realise that their secret was outed a long time ago, despite the rantings of media eejits like Cowan who enable the corruption to continue due to a nothing to see here attitude.
All of them and their ilk are destroying Scottish football, yet constantly whinge about the country’s lack of international progress.
It is all down to them that in football terms this country is going backwards at an alarming rate.
Parasites, cheats and clowns the lot of them.
I’m getting the vibes I had when they had that miracle run of home ties in cups.
High heid yins willing to fashion the improbable for sevco’s immediate financial
needs.
They’ve no real saleable assets foreseeably, couple that with no CL
and they’ve got bother with Ange’s juggernaut across the city mopping up
trophies.
I’m not saying it’s an existential threat to this version of ‘RFC’, but with debts to honour and a squad needing real attention, they’ve seen this movie before with
Brendan Rogers time here.
We know what they fear far more than ’10’, and without doubt, SFA professionalism has already began to sail using VAR- as it so clearly did before.
Dishonesty from a position of leadership is impractical and inexcusable.
That camera positioning/direction re Jota’s goal was unacceptable however it’s clear that overall, it’s not so much VAR that’s not working. What’s not working well is the honesty of the refs and the operators of VAR, their interpretations and decision making. That is something we all knew was going to continue because they are hun supporting cheats. That’s the real issue that needs to be addressed by us, not VAR, don’t get into them confusing the issue, don’t change the focus from that.
Interesting that Stephanie Frappart (known as Fanny to her friends) is going to be the first woman to ref a men’s World Cup game. Congratulations to her and to the objective progressive decision making by FIFA.
You have to wonder at why it is that FIFA hasn’t decided not to use any of the Fannies in this country.
If you read up about Hawk-Eye you find that fourteen cameras are needed in football for goal-line technology. For offside you must have a minimum of two cross park images which can be converted to an image showing the position of players at right angles across the pitch when the ball is kicked. If you don’t have two images then you have no accurate information to make that assessment. SFA can’t have accurate information since the necessary camera was pointed elsewhere.
In that case the “linesman” is the only person making the decision if the ref is not in a position to see across the lines. If the flag goes up it’s offside until proven otherwise. In my time following Celtic John Divers then Bobby Lennox were always too quick for linesmen and many valid goals were chalked off. Maybe it was the same for other clubs but we were always suspicious. The SFA constantly paint themselves into a corner by not admitting mistakes. It would really help the sport if the rules were changed to benefit the attacker and require daylight between attacker and defender before the player is offside. We have always been paranoid but that doesn’t mean that they haven’t always been out to get us. HH