Alan Muir’s position is untenable. Celtic should not be afraid to say so.

Last week, as we all suspected, the SFA released its latest VAR review, and it confirmed what we’ve been saying since Easter Road—Alan Muir broke the rules when he chopped off Celtic’s goal. No explanation has been offered for why he did it, and Willie Collum didn’t provide anything to clear the matter up.

Muir did not officiate any matches this weekend. He is one of our senior officials, one of only three full-time VAR officials, yet he wasn’t assigned to either of the cup games. Many believe this suggests he has been punished in some way.

But let’s be honest—after a decision like that, he’d be lucky to survive in any other field. Some Celtic sites went even further than this one and called his position untenable during the week. I can’t disagree.

And it’s not just the Celtic sites being critical of Muir, his decision, or the way the SFA has handled it. I’m not a big fan of the referees’ podcast with Steve Conroy and Des Roache, but even they were furious at the SFA’s casual dismissal of Celtic and the questions we rightfully have about what Muir thought he was doing. That dismissiveness was evident in Collum’s almost offhand explanation—not about what Muir actually did, but about what he should have done instead.

As I said last week, the audio makes it clear that Muir was never going to settle for anything other than ruling out the goal.

He had made up his mind before even reviewing the footage properly. He believed—or claimed to believe—that he was seeing something conclusive, something that nobody else could see. What’s most alarming is how clear it is from the audio that this was his stance from the start. He made his decision on the very first frame of the very first angle he looked at.

We’ve all seen the angles. We’ve all watched the footage. It is inconclusive. Everyone knows that in such circumstances, the on-field decision should have stood. Even the hacks in the media, who normally struggle to understand what they’re watching, knew what should have happened here. The audio confirms that Muir ignored even his assistant in the VAR room to push his own agenda.

We all expected the VAR audio to be revealing. We knew it would help us judge what actually happened. But I don’t think anyone realised just how damning it would be for Muir. It left no doubt that this was a man determined to disallow the goal. And part of that determination involved pressuring his VAR assistant into agreeing with him. That’s why he presented multiple different frames, always with the suggestion that “this one shows the ball is out”—even though none of them actually did.

Collum’s explanation is disingenuous nonsense.

He tries to claim that Muir and his assistant only made their final decision on the last angle, but the audio contradicts that completely. Muir’s assistant is finally browbeaten into agreeing with him at the end, but Muir himself was adamant from the start and repeatedly pushed his assistant to follow suit. In short, Collum has only muddied the waters and made himself complicit in this farce.

I understand that the head of referees wants to protect his officials. I get that. But is Collum really willing to take a bullet for this guy? It’s clear to me—and to a lot of other people—that Muir cannot be trusted. This is one of the SFA’s permanent VAR officials, and he has rendered himself unfit for the job. I don’t care if it’s bias, incompetence, or something else entirely.

At best, he has shown catastrophically poor judgment. But the audio suggests something more deliberate than a simple mistake.

These full-time VAR officials are supposed to be the best of the best. This was such an obvious call that getting it wrong would have been bad enough. But the audio proves this wasn’t just an error—he saw what he wanted to see, he reached the conclusion he wanted to reach, and he tried—twice—to convince his assistant to do the same when there was absolutely nothing in the footage to justify it.

It’s not enough that Celtic websites and fan sites have said this man’s position is untenable. Everyone should know his position is untenable. The clubs should know it. And they should say it—starting with ours.

Photo by Mark Scates/SNS Group via Getty Images

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