Rangers refereeing shambles could lead to lawsuit | OneFootball

I really don’t like being negative, especially over Christmas, but with the SFA deciding to ignore the outrage over last week’s Rangers VAR controversy, we now have to say something.

Yes, we understand that the SFA are very, very concerned about the careers of the two VAR officials Alan Muir and Frank Connor, who were involved in gifting the League Cup to Celtic, but isn’t the SFA also worried about the welfare and the careers of the referees themselves – the ones who were negatively affected by all this?

Well, apparently, they don’t care.

Because, not only did the SFA rush them back into officiating, with no obvious criticism of their work, they then chose to rub everyone’s nose in it, by giving one of them the chance to officiate a game involving Celtic!

Now at this point I want to make it clear I am not just talking about the THREE, yes 3 (three) penalty decisions that went against Rangers in last week’s match, I am also talking about how Scottish officials routinely seem to be always giving Celtic unfair assistance in matches.

For example, in just last week’s match against Dundee United I noticed the following incidents

At 1:50 the Utd player just touches the Celtic player’s back. No major force involved, but the Celtic player goes down, and the referee immediately calls a foul. So, that seems to be setting a baseline…..but;

At 5:02 a Celtic player then pushes his elbow into the head of the Dundee United player.

Despite the referee looking directly at the two players involved, and the linesman also having a clear view of the two players, neither the referee, or the linesmen gave a foul for this offence. Now I am not a referee, but with an elbow being involved, this would appear to be a far worse foul than the foul given against Dundee United at 1:50.

At 40:20 there was yet another elbow by a Celtic player, which this time was to the back of the neck. Again, the officials decide there was no foul.

Then there was a major decision point. At 51:25 minute a Celtic player swung his arm back at head height and his palm contacted the face of the Dundee player. Despite this being a sending off offence in the case if a Rangers player did this (remember Morelos was sent off (correctly) for the exact same offence against Hibs) and despite the referee being directly beside the two players involved and the referee could clearly see that the Celtic player swung his arm back at head height, no foul was given, and play continued with Celtic given the ball.

Again, these are just facts. It is not a conspiracy theory. It is what happens far too often in Scottish football matches. The rule book is not used consistently.

Now, the problem is the SFA is supposed to be looking after the welfare and the career of all footballers. Player’s careers are short, and one bad decision in a cup final can negatively affect a player’s career.

Here the SFA has to be very careful if it does not want to give the impression that it is entirely OK with match officials ignoring the rule book, if it benefits one specific team.

But the SFA is now in this position, because it is now apparently sending a huge F-U to both the players and fans by not only reinstating the match officials, but then choosing to give one a high-profile game involving Celtic.

And with the head of the SFA saying mistakes are OK and basically get used to it, this apparently is the SFA’s answer.

So, I called my friends in Japan, the US, The Netherlands and in Germany to see what they thought about this very strange decision by the SFA, to allow the VAR officials to return to officiating a Celtic game just one week after last the Cup final controversy, and to paraphrase their various answers, they also said it does look like the SFA is saying F-U to those who were demanding accountability.

So that is where we are. The SFA apparently really do not care about match officials making mistakes…

Which means we can only suggest that the players start thinking about lawsuits if there are any further mistakes during any future cup finals, because, sadly, that is where we now appear to be heading.