For the second time this season a full time VAR official has been deemed not to have applied the Laws of the Game to award Celtic a penalty.
After 10 rounds of fixtures that is a fairly high strike rate with Alan Muir guilty for the recent SPFL match at Motherwell and Greg Aitken the villain in the opening match of the season at home to Kilmarnock.
Last Sunday Aitken correctly disallowed a ‘goal’ allowed by David Dickinson because the ball had gone into the net off the arm of Daizen Maeda.
How Maeda ended up on the ground is the interesting part. As most Sky Sports viewers quickly realised he was pushed to the ground by Stephen O’Donnell who was caught on the wrong side of the Celtic winger as he advanced onto a pass from Alistair Johnston.
Despite having all of the Sky Sports cameras at his disposal Aitken failed to award Celtic a penalty, a decision that was contradicted by four of the five on the SFA Panel charged with ruling on Key Match Incidents.
The audio is the key part when it comes to the decision not to give a penalty after Maeda handball identified.
Was it discussed & deemed not to be a foul or did they (all of them) just completely disregard/not know/forget the correct process?
The latter would be worse!
— Stevie Jackson (@bobby__peru) November 1, 2024
After a lengthy discussion on the incident, the majority (4:1) of the panel deemed that this should have been identified as afoul by the on-field Referee and an on-field review should have been recommended by the VAR when the penalty was not awarded.
That announcement only tells half the story, what is of far more interest is the decision making process.
Did Muir review the incident for a penalty and decide that it wasn’t the case or did he decide not to review why Maeda ended up on the ground? Either way it isn’t a good look for the SFA who haven’t provided an explanation on the non-decision.
Willie Collum’s monthly VAR Review on You Tube has used audio to explain the decision making process.
Having highlighted an error that denied Celtic a penalty Collum is duty bound to share the audio to explain how Muir could make such a clear error.
During the August VAR Review, audio was released to reveal why Celtic were wrongly not awarded a penalty against Kilmarnock when Robbie McCrorie wiped out Kyogo Furuhashi. Aitken was on VAR, Don Robertson refereed the match.
With two obvious errors against him in matches involving Celtic there is bound to be more scrutiny from supporters with the lack of explanations from the SFA contributing to the issue and confusion.
Former EPL referee Martin Atkinson will take up a role as Head of VAR next month, clearly he has some issues to deal with involving Aitken and Muir, Andrew Dallas will be on VAR for Celtic’s League Cup semi-final against Aberdeen.
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9 Comments
by John A
All honest mistakes no doubt
by John
Same old story with them down the road they can’t see any thing but we know better @we are better that’s why we are the champions of SCOTLAND
by Johnny mcglinchey
Why bother with this garbage the game is past, are they going to give us a penalty the next time we play motherwell, NO. Pure corruption at it’s best
by Brian
We have to bother with it or we will end up getting rid of var, that would suit them very well. Right back to the honest mistakes and answer to no one. Var is not the problem, corruption is!
by God
Yet every hun you know argues differently why because there isn’t a brain between them spangles
by God
Var was supposed to highlight hun cheating instead it enhanced hun cheating took it to another level but still the afterbirth still think we’re corrupt how warped are they we’ve won more than scum ever will even with the funny handshake wankers refereeing cheats from tiny (obese orange bastard wharton) to uglier orange bastard Cheatin Beaton wake up deludamol peepol we’ve dominated you since the famine and brother walfrid decided that that was we were going to do and it’s happened just like we said it would .
by Tam
It’s corruption caused by bigotry and 99% of the sfa and referees are guilty of anti-celtic sectarian bigotry. Time the celtic board did something about it as some decisions are nothing but cheating It’s a disgrace in this day and age it’s 2024 not 1690
by John McGhee
We just need to go back to the EBT SIDELETTERS YEARS when the corrupt sfa spfl done nothing about the cheating oldco done for years they were liquidated 2012 and a newco sevco scotland fc were born untill sevco found out they could still call newco ranjurs aslong as the called them The Ranjurs fc 2012 the corrupt scum from hampden sfa.spfl let another club buy oldco titles and cups which has never ever been heard of but only in masonic scotland can this happen and it did the sfa.spfl let newco buy oldco cheating titles eh thats how corrupt the Scottish game is for the biggest cheats in Scottish football oldco and now newco the fans of all clubs should boycott all cup games and give hampden none of our money untill hampden is cleaned out from top to bottom dirty corrupt scumbags at the sfa.spfl thats afact.
by TicToc
HaHaHa, By God, “afterbirth”, I’ve never heard that one before, fukkin belter!
It challenges the “same flies on a new shite” for honesty and humour.
As for all the cheating, it’s been the case as far back as I can remember but possibly even worse since “afterbirth” arrived. BUT, what actual good has it done ‘them’? Cheating throughout Scottish fitba for ONE club originally, and now for a new company, never been a club, has NO HISTORY and no right to even join the bottom tier of Scottish fitba. But what good has ALL that effort done for them? Well actually, it’s “done for them”. Original club/company
Liquidated and the new huns deservedly in dire straits with no light at the end of the tunnel. A fukkin laughing stock created by all those who love them.
Poetic justice and there’s more to come. If the SFA, SPFL, LRA, BBC and all other SMSM had only admitted the truth in 2012, and Lawwell too, their troubles would be over, but no. And what we’re laughing at daily will be the stuff of nightmares for that scum and its acolytes. Hell mend them!
BTW, (other poster) the idea that Sevco ‘bought’ titles is utter bollox. You cannot buy someone else’s history so drop that crap, it can’t be done. They bought the Liquidated body parts of Rangers FC PLC. END.