Dallas shouldn’t have the Celtic game. He shouldn’t have any game and everyone knows it.

There was no real surprise this week when the officials were named for the game at Ibrox and Andrew Dallas ended up on VAR.

There was no way he wasn’t going to be involved. It was one of those things you could have predicted as easily as you can predict Glasgow rain.

It’s a joke. There’s really no point in sugarcoating it or starting this piece any other way. It’s such a joke, in fact, that even the referees’ podcast – which I often mock on this blog – run by two former professional officials, agrees that it’s a joke, and they did that before his appointment was even made official.

They knew he’d get the gig and that he shouldn’t.

They are well aware that Dallas’s continued presence as a major figure at the SFA is emblematic of everything wrong with the organisation.

And no one can argue with that. These two aren’t even saying Dallas is biased – as some of us undoubtedly would. I know I wouldn’t trust him with a 50/50 call that might significantly impact our season or our club in any way. Their view is that he’s just wildly inconsistent. Or to put it more bluntly, so consistently bad that he shouldn’t be anywhere near major games.

And it makes you wonder, doesn’t it? If Dallas is held in such low regard both inside and outside of Hampden – and it’s very clear that he is – then it brings home just how utterly indefensible Alan Muir’s position really was.

Because Dallas is at least as bad, if not worse.

Muir was literally caught with his pants down in a position that couldn’t be defended. But all Muir’s mistake did was highlight what we already knew about him. Dallas hasn’t been so badly compromised yet – but we all know what we need to. And the people at Hampden surely do too.

Of course it matters whether some officials are biased or not. I’m firmly of the opinion that Muir was caught because his distaste for Celtic momentarily overrode his common sense – and he forgot he was being recorded.

The way he comes across on that audio leaves no room for doubt. He had already made up his mind to disallow the goal, and everything else was just him fishing for validation and trying to get someone to back him up. He left himself no wiggle room at all.

Dallas’s father, likewise, was caught in a position from which there was no possibility of survival. He couldn’t possibly have extricated himself from that mess, although he tried – and his allies tried. Had he been dealing with one of the old-school SFA presidents or chief execs, he might even have gotten away with it.

But Stewart Regan, who was chief executive at the time, hadn’t yet been fully captured by the system – and he knew Dallas Snr’s position was beyond salvaging.

I don’t believe in making the son pay the price for the father’s mistakes. We’re not in a Sicilian vendetta here. But if Andrew Dallas’s SFA career had been cut short as collateral damage, no one would have fought the good fight on his behalf. No one would have said his position was tenable.

No one would have argued to keep him.

But by the same token, if there weren’t serious questions hanging over Dallas right now, there’d be no reason to be talking about him. You can’t penalise someone just because of their surname – that would be mad.

But Dallas isn’t being scrutinised because of his surname. He’s under scrutiny because he’s either not very good, or he’s up to no good.

So yes, of course it matters whether some officials are biased or not. I don’t want a single biased official at any level of the game. But if you ask me what’s worse – a biased official or one who’s hopelessly inept and shouldn’t have been given the job in the first place – I’d say it’s only a matter of degrees.

If you’re on the receiving end of a bad decision, it amounts to the same thing. Who cares what the motivation was?

The problem these people always face is that they can’t fall back on their records – because the records are the problem. It’s not enough for them to say they’ve made good calls as well as bad ones. It’s the bad ones they’re going to be judged on. And that’s exactly how it should be.

I heard a broadcaster last year, after one of the usual John Beaton controversies, try to defend him by saying there was no bias involved because Beaton had given bad decisions against the Ibrox club, Hibs, Aberdeen, Dundee United, and Hearts. As if that was some sort of shield.

Except that’s no defence at all, is it?

It didn’t seem to dawn on the guy that an official who makes so many mistakes across such a wide range of clubs probably shouldn’t be considered one of the top referees in the country – unless we’re happy for our national standard to be painfully and embarrassingly low. If that’s the best defence someone can offer for you, then you should’ve been put out to pasture long ago.

So finding out it was Dallas on VAR drew nothing but a weary, resigned shrug. It could’ve been worse. He could’ve been the one in the middle with the whistle, and Muir could still be employed. He could’ve been handling things instead.

But that’s just another matter of degrees. We’re now reduced to talking about the “least worst” options. And that says it all, doesn’t it?

That the least worst is the best we can hope for.

We knew Muir had to go. Hell, our websites said it. We were using the word “untenable” long before that audio clip made it fashionable and acceptable. But as some of us pointed out, Muir is a symptom of the wider disease – and his departure shouldn’t have been the end of the changes, but the start of them.

And if we were serious as a game about reform, about raising standards, about change – then Dallas wouldn’t be far behind him. Heading for the exit.

Everyone knows that.

We’re just waiting on the audio to prove it.