Yesterday, we won the game, and I have always thought that when you win, that is exactly the time to go on the offensive over things which were not quite right.
And yesterday’s officiating performance was about as bad as any I have seen in a long time.
It was also one in the eye for all the conspiracy theorists who claim that officials are doing everything they can to help Celtic win games, because yesterday certainly did not look like that.
The first offside is questionable.
It certainly does not look correct, but with our version of VAR you never quite know. When you look at the images where they drew the lines, the ball already appears to be in motion, and that alone raises questions.
A piece of footage on X appears to be a stonewall case for saying it’s a goal.
Collum owes us an answer for this.
The penalty they got was a penalty. But I also think the one we should have had was a penalty. That one isn’t getting the attention it deserves.
But the second Celtic goal which was knocked off is an atrocious decision, overturning established precedent if it is not completely ignoring the written laws of the game. There are so many elements which have to be discussed about that particular decision.
For a start, there is the absolute disgrace which is our version of VAR.
This is the same version we trusted for the first offside decision, and yet it was apparently not even up to the task of properly examining and adjudicating on the second. Why are we still pretending this is tolerable?
Why are we still pretending we can carry on as if this is not a shambles?
Our version of VAR is the most third-rate piece of junk, and we are relying on it to make major decisions. Worse than that, it is not even capable all the time of carrying out the analysis necessary to make those decisions properly.
That does not mean it gets every decision wrong.
When it works, it works well. But there are too many marginal calls which cannot really be analysed properly because the system we have is crap.
There are grounds where it does not even fully work, and whatever the technical fault was yesterday, most supporters I spoke to after the game understood what the rule was supposed to be: if VAR cannot make a determination, the on-field decision stands.
That makes it ridiculous that the referee then went to the monitor and overturned the original call. Look, in the end, this did not matter. It did not cost us.
We won the game.
As Martin O’Neill said, we might all feel very differently if we had not.
But we did. So, nobody can accuse us of sour grapes here. Nobody can accuse us of performing a routine. We are perfectly entitled to ask what happened. We are perfectly entitled to raise the issue publicly and say that VAR is not good enough.
Martin’s reference last night to having never seen so many crooked lines was funny because it is true, and we all remember incidents from last season where those lines became part of the controversy.
With a system this poor, the question has to be asked as to whether this is a luxury Scottish football can still afford in its current form.
Listen, I am in favour of VAR. It has been a net positive. It has corrected decisions which otherwise would have remained absolute outrages.
The penalty at Motherwell last season, which those on the other side of the argument have screamed about ever since, would have been a travesty had it not been given. Worse by a distance was the offside call involving Maeda’s goal at Celtic Park on the final day.
Without VAR, that goal does not stand and we might not be champions anyway, regardless of the Fir Park events and whatever anybody thinks of them.
So, VAR gave us a left-hand gift, if you want to characterise it that way, but it also corrected what would have been a generational injustice. That second incident is one nobody ever seems especially keen to talk about when they analyse last season.
The technology itself is not the problem. Our implementation of it is. Our system is a piece of crap, and we do not help ourselves by pretending otherwise. Yesterday’s decision could have been genuinely contentious.
It could have been the difference between one point and three.
And as long as the possibility exists that a decision like that could influence a title race or a cup tie in the future, it is not good enough to leave the system in place and simply cross our fingers. It is not good enough to say that it has not caused some catastrophic outcome yet and therefore everything is fine.
That is not how serious organisations manage risk. You fix the weakness before it decides something important. We saw how tight the title race became last season.
There was real potential for our dodgy version of VAR to miss something decisive because all the angles were not covered, because of a technical fault or because the available images simply were not good enough.
And when the SFA itself has acknowledged the limitations of the system, it is crazy that we continue relying on it to adjudicate matters which can determine games, titles and cups.
There is a lot of money at stake here, and that is only the financial part.
There are the aspirations and dreams of clubs and supporters too.
Those things matter.
As I said, I am a fan of the technology. I am not a fan of our version of it. And VAR was not even the only thing wrong with the officiating yesterday.
Colby Donovan’s early booking set the tone for the rest of the game.
It reminded me of Aberdeen’s match against the Ibrox club last weekend, where there seemed to be a succession of bookings for Aberdeen players which left you scratching your head. I do not know how many times over the last couple of years I have watched Celtic games where we are not allowed to build momentum because the opposition continually commits fouls and wins little stoppages which break the rhythm of the match, but the yellow cards stay in the pocket.
Then the first real incident involving a Celtic player arrives and suddenly out comes the card.
It feels like a record on repeat. The inconsistency is what drives people mad. Supporters can accept strict refereeing if it is strict for everybody.
They can accept leniency if it is applied consistently.
What they cannot accept is watching one threshold operate for 20 minutes and then seeing another threshold appear the first time one of our players commits a foul.
That is what creates suspicion. That is what creates anger.
And that is what gives conspiracy theorists on every side enough material to spend the next week screaming at one another.
For all of that, for Celtic it is five wins out of five in the league. Paulina will write about the game later, and the sun continues to shine over Celtic’s domestic campaign. We have made a good start. A perfect start.
Five wins from five in the league and six wins from six domestically overall.
The next couple of games are crucial to how the early shape of this season develops. Two weeks from now, we could conceivably be a minimum of eight points clear and have eliminated our main rivals from the League Cup.
But that is the future.
Right now, at this moment, we are in a very good place domestically.
And if you are not prepared to raise these issues now, when you have won and nobody can accuse you of bitterness, then you may as well never raise them. Because when the stormy weather comes, nobody listens.
Editors Note: This one is edited … I said that the first offside is “probably correct” but new footage shows definitively that it’s not. What a joke that decision is.
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Don Robertson and Gary Hilland on VAR take a bow, you played a blinder with two dodgy decisions, which thankfully didn’t influence where the points went. In Football the offside rule was changed in the 1980’s, from a player being level with the 2nd last defender [including the goalkeeper] when the ball is played forward to him is offside, to being level being onside.
VAR in Scotland is making a mockery of this change, there is no way those pictures last night proved that the player wasn’t at least level when the ball was played. In both incidents the Linesmen didn’t raise their flags and they were in great positions to judge.
In the 2nd incident the VAR officials admitted that with our VAR system they couldn’t adjudicate one way or the other. Why wasn’t the Linesman’s onfield decision then accepted, rather than the Referee go over and look at TV pictures that were not in line with the incident and then deciding that the player was offside from pictures at a 45% angle to the players concerned. Absolutely farcical .
Take the money out of Var and invest it in better trained, unbiased referees. Every other country makes referees declare who they support, it’s not difficult. There should also be consequences for referees who have a really bad game, the same way we would be hauled up at our places of employment if we messed up. I personally despise Var. I cant remember the last time I celebrated a goal at celtic park because my eyes are instantly drawn to the big screen waiting for the “VAR CHECKING” or on the TV when you’re just waiting on the commentator saying “There’s gonna be a check here”. It’s taken the instant joy out of goals for me and the fact that we speak about it every week is enough evidence that it doesnt work. It should either be 100% fool proof or it shouldn’t be around at all. It’s supposed to work so far in the background that we dont even know it’s there. Yes we have had calls go our way but we have had several against also and the fact there is a debate around decisions is proof it doesn’t work. It’s ruining the game, get rid of it. As always, just my opinion.
The only way you would get unbiased referees in Scotland would be being part of a European pool where no ref officiates in their own country. That should be possible in these days of easy travel. VAR is here to stay, we just need a better version, and refs who only go to VAR when there is a “clear and obvious mistake”.
Youd think it would be possible eh. The “clear and obvious” has never applied unfortunately. Last night is a perfect example
It’s time we consigned our Temu version VAR to the bin if it can’t get offside decisions correct. They are probably the most important decisions to make. Not enough cameras, funny angles and squinty lines. It’s an absolute shambles. Not only are wrong decisions going to cost clubs money they are costing punters money too. I had Duran to score as part of a bet which should have won, and then when he goes off it goes onto the man replacing him, he scores and that gets disallowed too!!! Hit in the pocket twice. Duran’s was never offside and although shims looked it, if they can’t draw lines then it was “clear and obvious” and the goal should have stood. Or are all the officials so incompetent that they’ve forgotten that that’s what VAR is for? “Clear and obvious error”- neither of the disallowed goals where that. Now we’ve got folk drawing lines to disallow goals from stupid angles when they have no idea whether it’s the correct decision or not. Sky camera- onside
Var camera- offside. Funny that.
Credit where credit is due James you nailed the VAR debate on the head!!
It’s a total fk up at some grounds and yes you are totally correct to raise the subject even though we won the game