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Jota wasn’t the only person who cried at Celtic’s third. Beaton probably had a tear in his eye too.

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Image for Jota wasn’t the only person who cried at Celtic’s third. Beaton probably had a tear in his eye too.

If, like me, you found some of the decisions in yesterday’s game baffling, I have the answer to the mystery.

If you know who the officials were, you’ll know this already. If you don’t, you probably won’t be surprised to find out that John Beaton was on VAR. And I can well believe that come the end of that game, Jota wasn’t the only person in that stadium who had a tear in his eye when he scored the third goal.

I knew we were in for one of those days when I saw Beaton was on VAR. I would rather have him out on the pitch, where there’s some form of accountability for the decisions he makes, rather than sitting in the VAR room, where he can look over every single moment to find something—some thread he can pull on—to deny Celtic a goal or gift one to the opposition when there’s a clear foul on our defender.

And don’t even get me started on the VAR lines. If I had to bet on a game where we’d have at least one goal chopped off because of dodgy VAR lines, it would be a game at Motherwell—because we’ve had that happen at this ground before. There are flaws in the system at certain grounds that are obvious and stand out a mile, and this is one of them. And where there’s room for doubt, people like Beaton will exploit it.

Have you even seen the VAR lines that were drawn for one of our offside calls? Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.

It’s embarrassing to think that we have such a second-rate system in Scotland. But you know what? I don’t think it’s just about affordability. I think certain people just like having a little grey area—a bit of wiggle room.

I hate that we have to do this so often. I hate that VAR subjects us to such an embarrassing number of these games.

And I have to remind myself constantly—VAR is not the problem. VAR is just a piece of technology. It’s those who are using it who are the problem, and it’s the manner in which it’s used that’s the issue. On the whole, I think it’s been positive.

But—and there’s always a but—we either need to improve our version of it significantly and stop leaving it to the guys with the little orange crayons, or we need to change the guys implementing it.

Everybody knows that I actually like some of the changes Willie Collum has brought in. I think they are, on balance, pretty positive, and I think he’s doing a good job. But he still operates within a system that does not function as it should. And there are people in it who shouldn’t be.

I know the Ibrox club’s support labours under major conspiracy theories about us. They were at it again the other day with the number of bookings relative to the number of fouls, and I’ve written about this extensively. All it proves to me is that certain officials love giving free kicks against us for the smallest, tiniest of incidents—but that very few of those incidents rise to the level of a yellow card.

What they think is proof that our players don’t get booked, I see as proof that in a game where we have 80% of the possession and the opposition has 20%, we get punished a hell of a lot more than that possession split would suggest we should.

And John Beaton is a master of that game. He’s one of the most notorious officials for giving fouls against us—innocuous, simple little things. But every time there’s a 50/50 challenge, you know which way it’s going with this guy. He stops the game at every opportunity. He slows down our momentum every chance he gets. But it’s on VAR that someone like Beaton can really do damage.

And for that reason, I was not happy to see his name on the officials’ list for this game. I was especially unhappy to see which position he was going to hold. So when I saw those very strange VAR lines, I wasn’t surprised.

It was exactly what I expected to happen.

And when I saw Jota get that very late goal to put the match beyond Motherwell, I knew he wasn’t the only person in that ground who must have got a little bit emotional at his strike.

Photo by Craig Foy / SNS Group via Getty Images

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7 comments

  • Johnny Green says:

    Well if he was crying all the way home he didn’t have far to go. Motherwell to the Crown Bar Loyal in Bellshill is only 2 miles.

  • Jay says:

    I missed the game yesterday but watched the highlights on the awful show on the BBC. I could not believe my eyes when I seen the offside lines.
    I knew the scoreline so when Idah had scored the 3rd I was a little confused & after it being disallowed I was even more confused.

    We need to back St. Mirren in there push to have VAR be ran independent of the SFA.

    Personally I would get rid of it completely in domestic football. It’s not perfect in Europe but at least they can demonstate in replays & CGI imaging showing by how much the player was offside.

    Here it’s too pish lines that are probably thicker than the perceived gap they are trying to highlight.

    When you see FA cup games in England that don’t have VAR it is a far more entertaining spectacle then any football with it these days.

    I think things like goal line technology & automatic offsides are things that should be implemented but when it comes to the close calls we need to just accept it’ll be wrong at times.
    Even with VAR errors are still made. It just makes things worse because it’s so heavily analysed so the error becomes harder to justify.

    • Clachnacuddin and the Hoops says:

      Good post Jay – However I respectfully disagree with your last paragraph…

      Such as it is it keeps them in some semblance of check especially in The Glasgow Derby games…

      I don’t think that I could stomach goin back to the way things were…

      Kyriogas five thru The air in injury time at Tynecastle 19 years and 11 months ago still haunts me and we lost the league on black sabbath* by one point – Andy Davis a traffic cop was the linesman that gave the winning penalty that never was…

      The League Cup Final of 2003 still haunts me – Hartson OFFSIDE in HIS OWN FUCKIN HALF…

      Nah as you say it’s far from perfect but it puts them under a spotlight of sorts so that’ll do for me a wee bitty anyway…

      As you say we should back St.Mirren 100% plus…

      But as we don’t appear to employ a CEO just how in the actual fuck can we !

  • PeteK says:

    I hate the marginal offsides. They go against the spirit of that rule. Fair enough it can arguably be black and white but I think there should be a clear gap between the defender and the attacker, none of the just offside by a toe or shoulder stuff.

    • micmac says:

      Agree Peter,Back in 1990 the law was changed to, if you were level with the 2nd last defender[Including the goalkeeper] you were onside. Before that if you were level you were offside. The law was changed to give the attacker the benefit of the doubt, VAR has changed things dramatically, and now both players being level has more or less switched the advantage back to the defender.
      I hope that Wenger’s proposal of daylight between attacker and defender is eventually a rule change. It won’t stop controversy completely but it will help and reinstate the advantage to the attacking player once again.

  • Hunter17 says:

    James i wonder if that mute board of ours are blind aswell… why’s is that blatant cheating not called out by them because at the end of the day there the only real voice we have to get it curtailed for a wee while also why doesn’t Rodgers at least query it on camera.. put the spotlight on them ??

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