Celtic’s Worst Fears Are Confirmed As VAR Chaos Engulfs The Scottish Game.

During the early weeks of VAR in Scotland, Celtic went to the SFA for the first time with their concerns.

What they said is largely shrouded in secrecy, but we do know – because they briefed it to the media – that they were concerned that the way it was being used risked turning the game here into a laughing stock.

I’m sure that the powers-that-be ignored that concern.

Because they are arrogant and insular and probably believe themselves to be largely infallible.

Don’t forget how it works here.

You can’t even get onto the SFA executive ladder unless you’ve put time in on their other committees lower down in the structure.

It’s not an environment that rewards or values individuality or original thinking.

By the time you reach the top you’ve been captured by the system; Hell you are the system.

We’re as far here from the meritocracy as it’s possible to get.

The whole thing is like a bad joke, and for a long time the joke has been on us. But now Celtic has been vindicated and that concern has now blown up into something much bigger.

Because this game is a laughing stock now.

The implementation of VAR in Scotland has been a disaster on a scale nowhere else has suffered.

It wasn’t just that this weekend saw yet more dodgy decisions in favour of one club, it’s that every game in the top flight was in some way or another blighted by this thing, which is now being widely seen as a scourge.

If you polled the managers of every club in the SPFL right now, VAR would be gone by the close of business today.

One club’s boss has publicly said he has faith in the technology and, most critically, those operating it; it just so happens, of course, that he’s the only manager who has not been on the wrong end of a truly contentious decision.

What a coincidence, right?

When this technology was introduced and the SFA defended early “errors” by saying that they had expected “teething troubles” Ange scorned the very idea of it, pointing out that there are leagues all over the world, some much smaller the SPFL, which have adopted this thing virtually pain free. Australian football has had it for years, he said.

“It was the talk of the town as if it was brand new,” he said. “Australia, which everyone seems to think is a backwater, had VAR four years ago. It’s not new. Referees in our league who referee in Europe have used it. We made it out to be a really big thing with big expectations. Now we are saying ‘expect teething problems’. I don’t know why there would be teething problems for something that’s been around for four or five years.”

VAR was supposed to be a progressive move.

How come its ended up being a regression instead? I’ll tell you why, and it gets us to the heart of the problem, which is that it’s not the technology because the tech itself is just a tool to be used.

The problem is with those operating and running it, with those making the decisions and those are the same serial incompetents – or serial cheats; it amounts to the same thing when the consequences are the same – who were refereeing games before it.

The standard of Scottish officiating was in the toilet already and because there’s no mechanism for making refs accountable for mistakes all this has done is give them new and interesting ways to screw up and heap shame and scorn on our national sport.

The clubs are very soon going to have to make a decision as to whether this technology will be used next season, but they’ve actually got a bigger decision than that, and it’s about how long we continue to ignore the real problem which is that our referees are a bog-standard disgrace to the game and that this is a problem which the use of technology only to serves to highlight to a wider audience?

Celtic was right, and Celtic knew what the problem was and where it lay, and what the danger was in letting the current crop of officials run this show.

I know we fought hard for this technology, and we believe in its utility.

But we do not trust the people behind the cameras, and we never did.

Our worst fears have been confirmed, and the message our club should be sending out now to the rest is that getting rid of VAR will only make us look worse; the league which dumped it because it proved how bad its officiating actually is.

Sort that problem out instead and everything else will click into place.