Dodgy VAR lines expose Andrew Dallas and his dubious decision

Straight away Sky Sports viewers were suspicious of the VAR ‘evidence’ provided to disallow an 11th minute ‘goal’ from Kyogo Furuhashi in Sunday’s Glasgow Derby.

It was a trademark attack from Celtic, springing forward, using raw pace to open up opponents completed by a clinical finish.

Sure there was a call to be made on offside, the move developed at high pace which is exactly the situation that VAR is required for.

Rather than the usual six cameras available at the other matches over the weekend Andrew Dallas and Graeme Stewart (thug cop) had the full range of over 20 Sky Sports cameras to make their decision for an incident that the nearside assistant referee didn’t flag for.

At the European Championships in the summer 3D VAR images were quickly produced, the viewer was taken from the camera angle to look along the line with the most marginal decisions cleared up instantly. Except for viewers to the SPFL.

A few minutes after Dallas had disallowed the ‘goal’ a very inconclusive image was shown by Sky Sports to justify the decision. It is strange that there is a delay in the image used for the decision being made available to television viewers.

If the image above was used it calls into question the whole VAR system, the equipment and those operating it.

How they decide the moment that Callum McGregor strikes the ball and transfer that into the exact positions of Nicolas Kuhn and John Souttar is up for debate, there will be a human element to it which introduces a margin for error.

What isn’t beyond question is the two lines used in the image given to Sky Sports. The blue line from Souttar’s shoulder towards the pitch leans slightly towards the defender, the red line from Kuhn leans slightly away from him.

At half time Sky Sports barely covered the offside ‘goal’ there was no forensic analysis and no mention after the match.

Brendan Rodgers wasn’t convinced about the decision as he hinted at during some after-match interviews but with Celtic winning 3-0 that early decision hasn’t had anything like the scrutiny given to a disallowed goal at Ibrox last September following a foul on Gus Lagerbielke or a penalty claim against Alastair Johnston when Abdallah Sima was in an offside position.

Two weeks ago the SFA contacted BBC Scotland during the match coverage to explain a decision made by Matthew MacDermid who u-turned on a foul awarded to St Johnstone to allow a goal by Cyriel Dessers to stand.

Before the season started Willie Collum went on a round of media interviews to explain how things would be different this season with VAR specialist Jon Moss brought in to introduce transparency.

A month into the season Collum has fallen silent, to the surprise of no-one there has been virtually no mainstream coverage of the incident and the inconclusive ‘evidence’ offered up by the SFA.