Reports came out this morning that VAR in the Scottish Premiership is being fast tracked and will no longer be getting introduced after the World Cup in Qatar.
It will now be introduced in just over a week’s time, with the first match to use the system being Hibs against St Johnstone on Friday the 21st October.
However, Celtic will be involved in the first televised appearance of VAR in the domestic game in Scotland live on Sky Sports, as it will be in place when we play Hearts at Tynecastle the very next day.
And that announcement today has got me thinking, that Hearts manager Robbie Nielson may finally be forced into praising Celtic and giving us credit for beating his side, should we pick up all three points of course.
I’ve wrote about this before, Neilson is one of several managers in this league who cannot bear to give as an ounce of credit, even when it is absolutely due.
The reason for Celtic beating his side is the same every single time from him. It was the referee’s fault.
I have no doubt that he will moan about the referee still, but no way can he say they lost the game because he felt the referee gave a penalty when he shouldn’t have or a goal should have been offside when it was given or that Celtic should have had a player sent off but didn’t.
All these types of incidents will be reviewed by VAR, yes, occasionally you have a really bad ref and even when looking at an incident back on replay will still give the wrong decision, but 9 times out of 10 they will make the correct decision.
Neilson, and the likes of McInnes, Mackay and Martindale might now find it much more difficult to blame referees every time they are outclassed by us, and they may just have to eventually do the thing they cannot bear to do…
Praise Celtic.
