Alan Stubbs has underlined the parody status of Scottish football while agonising through Everton’s battle against relegation.
The club that he left Celtic for in 2001 are back involved in their annual relegation battle with the additional issue of having points docked for overspending in previous seasons.
Sean Dyche has barely been able to get involved in the transfer market as he strives to get a thinly stretched squad away from the dreaded bottom three places.
Every match seems to be a grind with Saturday’s trip to Bournemouth typical of their season, the south coast club are everything that Everton aren’t with every area of the club performing to the maximum.
When the players cross that white line it is all about 11 against 11 but refereeing issues can be the difference between two clubs reasonably closely matched, small margins to come into play as Stubbs discovered on Saturday.
Another scandalous decision from yesterday’s referee Samuel Barrett 🙈 Var ( virtually always rong ) should have come in and overruled but it’s @Everton so no penalty!! Howard Webb it has become worse since you took over! pic.twitter.com/vB3aJN0CM6
— Alan Stubbs (@alanstubbs_6) March 31, 2024
Should ❌ Would ✅
— Alan Stubbs (@alanstubbs_6) March 31, 2024
The Daily Echo in Bournemouth reports Dyche saying:
I don’t think it was helpful during the game, how we don’t get a penalty for a foul on Calvert-Lewin. I think that is what VAR is meant to do.
I think we’re all scratching our heads about VAR this season. I don’t know how it’s seemingly got into the situation it’s got into.
But it can’t just be me, I think everyone is talking about why is that not a penalty and another one is?
I’ve seen enough penalties given this season where people say ‘well, there was contact’ where it’s boot end on boot end and you think how is that really contact?
But that is actually contact. A proper kick in the shins. How is that not given? They will give me some weird interpretation of it I’m sure.
The tweets from Stubbs illustrate the contempt in which Scottish football is viewed, reinforced by the events over the weekend with Hibs and Celtic giving silent support to Crawford Allan.
At Ibrox on Saturday Andrew Dallas went out of his way to discover contact on John Souttar to prompt David Dickinson to check the monitor with the inevitable outcome.
A day later at Livingston Alan Muir seemed to find one angle that wasn’t conclusive for the penalty box foul on Kyogo Furuhashi and instructed Don Robertson to play on. From virtually every angle it was clear that Mikey Devlin arrived late and wiped out the Celtic striker.
Later this morning the SFA will announce the officials for Sunday’s Glasgow Derby with John Beaton or Nick Walsh expected to referee it with Greg Aitken on VAR duty.
CLICK HERE as Celtic fans call out Tom English.
