Australia, England, South Korea, Czech Republic, Italy, France, Brazil…
In fact pretty much every nation with any kind of notable premier league – even Poland.
But not Scotland.
Scotland is the only ‘modern’ nation to not have VAR – yes, the A-League has it, Morocco has it, even the Saudi top flight has it, but the only domestic league with any ‘credibility’ which doesn’t is our very own Scottish Premiership.
Following Kevin Clancy’s appalling blunders and yet more ridiculous decisions which (nearly) hurt Rangers, it has to be a categorical change made for next season.
True, not everyone likes the technology, and even rare decisions can be ‘wrong’ – but technology-assisted refereeing is going to be wrong a LOT less than human decision making.
We don’t want to be too harsh on these men (and women) – they (mostly) make honest calls and try to get them right. But a lot of the time they get key decisions wildly wrong – Celtic’s offside goal in the cup final, their handball goal today – these have to be reversed because they’re flagrant miscarries of justice.
Most sports do have video replay tech, and the chance for officials to consult. We’re utterly in favour of this for Scotland, not just to make it fair for Rangers, but for all. It will go against us too – we’ll get reds or yellows or pens against us too when previous they’d go unnoticed.
And that’s fine – it just makes it an even playing field. And that’s all we want.
Surely there’s no argument against this.
Who would pay for it , as some clubs might not be able to afford it . But In the future every club that wants to play in Europe will probably need to have it
Celtic claim to want it too, So them and us, 50-50 split the price, maybe. I believe in my heart, Clancy and others, are heavily biased, as yesterday showed. VAR is going to nip it in the bud. No longer, will they be able to openly 'cheat' and then claim they never saw it. That BS, has reigned, too long!
Maybe the introduction of VAR would lead to less "mistakes" being made when referees understand their bias will be called out and instantly corrected. You say that Rangers too will suffer from decisions that were missed by the referee. We already have such a system in place. It's called Claire Whyte Compliance Officer.
I'm not really a fan of VAR as it is employed in England but I think it is needed up here. Just yesterday there were a number of incidents that VAR would have needed to change the on field decision:
1. There was a blatant jersey pull from behind of Morelos in the box that should've resulted in a penalty and a yellow card for the defender. At the time it seemed rather innocuous but given that we were subsequently penalised for a pull on the jersey at the Ceptic penalty it should've been awarded.
2. The Ceptic penalty was rightly penalised and would've been confirmed by VAR and shown to be consistent with point 1.
3. A penalty should've been awarded for the jersey pull on Aribo and a yellow card given to the offender. Again VAR would be consistent with points 1 and 2.
4. The Ceptic goal would have been disallowed for a hand ball.
5. Rangers would've been awarded a free kick on the edge of the Ceptic box in the closing minutes after Julien pulled down Morelos and would've received a straight red card. I'm sure VAR would've reversed the original decision to penalise Morelos.
Add to that the free kick awarded at Pittodrie for a foul inside the box and the offside goal in the Cup Final and what is currently a great start to the season could've been a fantastic start.
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