Happy New Year to all Rangers fans, and 2024 has certainly started off with tongues wagging.

The SFA’s cover-up over the VAR audio is becoming a major ‘diplomatic incident’ between Rangers, the SPFL and the national governance of sport north of the border.

It is extremely troubling that the SFA refuses to hand over the VAR audio, refuses to engage with the club over discussion about it, and will not do a single thing regarding resolving this until around Wednesday at the earliest.

In short, the SFA are refusing accountability, and are violating a member club by failing to communicate.

We understand CEO James Bisgrove and SFA CE Ian Maxwell HAVE met, but we don’t know what that exactly means, and certainly doesn’t mean Rangers are any closer to this audio.

The bottom line is Willie Collum has been caught with his pants down.

Whether he lied, cheated or just made a heinous error, he’s the centre of this calamity and his failure to award a penalty remains extremely concerning.

Now, we know that Collum has actually made shambolic errors in the past which benefited our club, and he has also used VAR to award us penalties which everyone else missed.

Whatever team he may or may not support, Collum is most likely guilty of gross misconduct.

But it doesn’t change the facts; the penalty should have been awarded, wasn’t, and later on after the fact another reason was found regarding why it wasn’t.

And now the SFA are covering the backside of one of their own by stalling for time over this audio.

Are they trying to doctor the audio? Figure some way to make him look justified?

We can’t quite figure it out, but Rangers deserve a fair answer.

Would it have changed the game? No idea, but it was a clear and blatant penalty, and it’s the latest in a long line of penalties Rangers don’t get at Parkhead the past 13 years.

It’s no wonder we want to hear the audio.