Rangers’ SFA VAR row took a further ‘twist’ when Scotland’s governing body inadvertently confirmed Rangers’ case is correct, despite being ‘disappointed’ in the Ibrox club’s statement.
The Willie Collum VAR scandal is well-documented, with Rangers having requested the official doesn’t operate on any Rangers matches again, but the SFA’s comments are very revealing about the truth here:
“Chief executive James Bisgrove and director of football operations Creag Robertson attended a private briefing with the head of referee operations, Crawford Allan, to review the incident in question, including the use of matchday audio. We understood from the chief executive that the meeting had been constructive and informative, and conducted amicably. This does not appear to be reflected in the club’s statement.”
We’re pretty sure the club statement does not condemn the SFA or the meeting.
It goes on, and here’s the doozy:
“…offside would not have been mentioned at the time as it was not part of the VAR’s decision-making on the handball”.
And the further doozy:
“It was highlighted within Clydesdale House that had the VAR considered the incident to be a handball offence and asked the referee to carry out an on-field review, the attacking phase of play would have been checked and an offside would have been identified.”
So the SFA have literally agreed Willie Collum ignored the handball or at very least missed it… and then covered it all up.
The key part is ‘had the VAR (Collum) considered the incident to be a handball offence’ and he didn’t.
He didn’t consider it to be, despite even Neil blinkin’ Lennon spotting it and admitting it was 100% a penalty.
The SFA have done Collum no favours here, and aren’t helping themselves by attacking Rangers.
As far as we can see Rangers did nothing wrong, the following comment from the SFA just trolls yet more:
“We note posts from a recent official media partner of the club’s detailing requests from the private meeting that were immediately rejected. We would ask that club representatives show greater responsibility in such matters, especially in the context of recent incidents in European football that have compromised the safety of match officials and led to widespread condemnation.”
You mean your immaturity basically got grassed up and you didn’t like it.
This really is one messy affair.