Celtic’s job is to make officials irrelevant on Sunday. But we should not have to.

There is something rather uncomfortable hanging in the air around Celtic at the moment. Perhaps it is my Ginger Witch instincts speaking again. Perhaps it is simply the accumulated irritation of watching VAR decisions, strange refereeing calls and inconsistencies across Scottish football.

But with the Ibrox mob waiting for Celtic in the cup, I cannot pretend that I am not thinking about the officials.

And I don’t like that. I don’t like going into a Celtic game wondering what the referee might do, and I don’t like looking at the VAR team and thinking, please, just don’t interfere with this game unless you absolutely have to.

I certainly don’t like the feeling that Celtic somehow need to be so much better than the opposition that even a questionable decision cannot hurt us.

Yet here we are.

The last two Celtic matches have hardly helped to calm those nerves. Against St Mirren, we had a match surrounded by VAR controversy and technical problems. Celtic eventually fought back to win 2-1, but the game included a disallowed Camilo Duran goal, another ruled-out effort from Shim Mheuka and a VAR system which was struggling to function properly. Then came St Johnstone.

Celtic won 1-0 thanks to Mika Baur’s first goal for the club, and what a moment that was for the new Bhoy, but once again we were left talking about VAR after Haissem Hassan appeared to have scored a second.

The goal was ruled out because the assistant referee judged that the ball had gone out of play before Kasper Høgh headed it back across goal. The footage did not exactly leave everybody convinced, and VAR could not conclusively overturn the on-field call.

And this is where my English-teacher brain starts twitching, because words matter.

Inconclusive. That is an important word.

If the evidence is inconclusive, how can we possibly be completely comfortable with what has happened? VAR was supposed to remove uncertainty. It was supposed to give referees another opportunity to get important decisions right and make football fairer.

Instead, sometimes it feels as though we have simply created a second referee who can make the first referee’s controversial decision even more complicated.

And then, almost at the same time, we look across Glasgow and see decisions involving the Ibrox mob which appear to go rather more kindly in their direction.

Look at their game against St Mirren and the incident involving Emmanuel Fernandez and Ismael Kabia. St Mirren themselves described it as a strong penalty claim after Kabia was caught by Fernandez inside the area, while former referee Bobby Madden subsequently argued that a penalty should have been awarded under UEFA guidance. No spot-kick was given and VAR did not intervene.

Again, I am not interested in claiming that every decision benefiting the Ibrox mob is proof of some giant conspiracy. I am not saying that somebody is sitting in a dark room somewhere plotting against Celtic, and I am not saying every referee is biased.

That would be far too simplistic.

What I am saying is that Celtic supporters are entitled to look at what is happening and ask questions. We are entitled to expect consistency. We are entitled to expect competence. And we are absolutely entitled to expect VAR to be used in a way which makes sense.

Because if the technology can scrutinise a Celtic goal frame by frame, line by line and angle by angle, then supporters have every right to expect exactly the same level of scrutiny when the decision involves Celtic’s opponents.

That is not paranoia. That is simply fairness.

And now we have the cup.

Celtic against the Ibrox mob. A massive cup tie, the sort of match where one decision, one goal, one penalty or one red card can completely change everything. And I have to admit something. The thought of VAR making a huge decision in that game gives me a very uncomfortable feeling.

Not because I expect cheating. Because I expect pressure.

I expect noise, emotion and thousands of people screaming for something. I expect every decision to be magnified, and that is precisely why the officials have to be exceptionally strong. They cannot be influenced by the crowd. They cannot be influenced by reputation. They cannot be influenced by the occasion or the shirt, and they absolutely cannot be influenced by what happened five minutes earlier.

The referee has one job. The VAR team has one job.

Get the decisions right. That’s it.

And Celtic have another job.

Make the officials irrelevant.

That is the part which matters most to me. I want Celtic to walk into that game with the mentality of Champions. Not nervous Celtic, not angry Celtic, not Celtic worrying about referees. Champions.

I want Martin O’Neill’s Celtic to play with such authority that a dodgy decision becomes an inconvenience rather than a catastrophe. If Celtic score two, a questionable decision has less power to hurt us. If Celtic score three, it becomes background noise.

If Celtic dominate possession, create chance after chance and defend like a wall, then suddenly the referee has far less power over the outcome.

That is the mentality I want.

But, and this is a very big but, I refuse to accept the argument that Celtic should simply be so much better that refereeing errors don’t matter. Why should we? Why should any football club have to approach an important match thinking, “We need to score three because one of our goals might mysteriously disappear”?

Why should supporters have to think, “Let’s hope VAR behaves today”?

Why should players have to wonder whether something they achieve on the pitch will actually count? That is not what football should be.

Football should be decided by football. By players, tactics, skill, courage and goals. By mistakes made by footballers, not technological confusion.

And certainly not by officials becoming the main characters.

I have spent enough years teaching English to know that consistency is one of the most important words in any language. You cannot have one standard for Celtic and another for the Ibrox mob. You cannot have one interpretation on Saturday and another interpretation the following weekend.

You cannot tell us VAR exists to correct clear errors and then have a system which repeatedly finds itself unable to establish what actually happened. And you cannot expect supporters simply to shrug their shoulders and say, “That’s football.”

It isn’t good enough anymore. Because VAR has changed the argument.

Before VAR, we could accept that a referee might miss something in real time. Human beings make mistakes. I understand that better than most.

But once you introduce technology capable of slowing everything down, freezing frames and examining incidents from multiple angles, the standard must become higher. Not lower.

And Celtic must demand that standard without allowing ourselves to become consumed by it. That is my biggest concern before this cup tie. I don’t want Celtic walking onto that pitch already fighting the referee in their heads. I don’t want our players looking at the fourth official, and I don’t want the bench exploding after every decision.

I want the Celtic I have seen growing in power. The Celtic which can produce dazzling football, which keeps winning even when everything isn’t perfect, and which has the mentality of Champions.

That Celtic should walk into the game and say: “You can have your noise. You can have your VAR. You can have your stadium. We have Celtic.”

And that is what I want to see.

Because my Ginger Witch senses are telling me that this game could be messy. It could be fiery. It could be decided by one moment.

Therefore, Celtic need to be ruthless, clinical, intelligent and disciplined. We need to score the goals, defend properly and give the referee as little opportunity as possible to become part of the story.

But I will still be watching. I will still be questioning.

And if another decision goes against Celtic, I will not simply smile and say, “Well, we should have been better.”

Because Celtic should be better. And so should Scottish refereeing. Those two things can be true at exactly the same time. Celtic must be better than the officials can influence. But Scottish football must reach the point where we no longer feel that Celtic have to be.

Because when that first whistle blows, I want the story to be about Celtic. I want it to be about our football, our hunger, our Champions’ mentality and our boys in green and white.

And when the final whistle comes, I want the only thing influencing the result to be the team wearing the Hoops. Not VAR. Not controversy. Not the referee.

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