Before the game today, I wrote that the implementation of VAR would not halt the ‘honest mistakes’ against our side while the officials doing the checking were the same who officiate our games week after week. Boy was I proven correct right away. Today there were 6 VAR talking points and of which only one you could say remotely went in our favour which was retaking the penalty.
This though proved pointless as Lawrence Shankland dispatched the retake for a well-deserved hat trick. It also sets a dangerous precedent. Will all penalties be retaken when a player runs in the box? If so we will be seeing a lot more retakes. What we never saw with that goal was whether Josh Ginnelly was offside from Shankland’s rebound (He wasn’t).
To the other decisions, I have no issue with either of the penalties for them, it is something our centre halves will have to be more aware of moving forward. The disallowed Ralston goal was the usual pushing and shoving in the box and as for our penalty appeal just before half time… Look you can understand slightly when the on-field officials miss this but for VAR to agree is nothing other than scandalous.
Only in Scottish football could that not be a penalty. Make no mistake this could have cost us points today. VAR won’t be perfect, that’s what they will argue, but it should be fair, as with so many honest mistakes in our country they very rarely balance out.
Once again though, you throw everything at this Celtic team and they come out the other side. Not even VAR can stop us.