{"id":18005,"date":"2022-10-24T07:53:04","date_gmt":"2022-10-24T06:53:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/etims.net\/?p=18005"},"modified":"2022-10-24T07:53:04","modified_gmt":"2022-10-24T06:53:04","slug":"celtic-diary-monday-october-24-var-what-is-it-good-for","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/etims.net\/?p=18005","title":{"rendered":"Celtic Diary Monday October 24: VAR-What Is It Good For ?"},"content":{"rendered":"

VAR made it’s long awaited debut in Scottish football at the weekend.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Celtic had two goals chalked off and two penalties awarded against them, largely because there were two referees looking for infringements.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

There was a suspicion of handball when a Hearts defender swatted the ball away as James Forrest flicked it past him, but , as the rules state, that wasn;t a “clear and obvious error ” and so merited no further action.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As we pointed out last week, it’s all about the interpretation of the rules.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

On the other side of Glasgow, “rangers ” were held to a 1-1 draw by Livingston, who were reduced to ten men after VAR upgraded to red a challenge on Oscar winning Alfredo Morelos who rolled over a late but not malicious yellow card challenge,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Miller<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Even the addition of seven minutes i njury time….that’s how long the chunky Colombian rolled for….didn;t help them, which would have caused consternation for Greg Aitken, who was operating the VAR on behalf of the Ibrox club.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

That’s right…that Greg Aitken.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Image\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Image\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

They’ll be sending for Madden soon……<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Celtic win over Hearts could arguably be said to be one of the best performances of the season in the most exciting match so far, but it need not have been.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Hearts did play reasonably well, and the penalties were penalties, of that we can be sure, but neither would have been given had they been at the other end, as they say, with or without VAR.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The two goals that were removed were done as a result of two referees looking for an excuse to influence play by changing or stopping the pattern of play.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A sort of match fixing without EBTs.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Before the game, Ange Postecoglou had seemed a little bewildered by all the fuss around the introduction of the new technology. Afterwards, you get the feeling he knows exactly why it’s there.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But he remained focused on the football, and the performance of hois players who have definitely regained their mojo.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

No, not that fucking one.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The actual football seemed to have been forgotten on Saturday, but Celtic were outstanding, and could easily have racked up half a dozen or more goals at a difficult venue, and the attitude of the players was unmistakable.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

They wanted to win.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And that’s fourteen goals in three games…..<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As Ange said…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

‘There was a bit of theatre there with VAR that some seemed to enjoy, but overall, what pleased me was, again, the players that character and resilience that we know that\u2019s within them to find a way to win.’<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cBut what was important for us is that we didn\u2019t get distracted by the noise and the theatre of everything that was happening, and we just tried to focus on our football and staying disciplined.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWe had to do that today because it would have been easy to get distracted by everything else that was going on, but the players maintained their discipline.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t a great start to the second half, and particularly the crowd here, they got a lift with that, but over the course of a season, you\u2019re going to get different challenges.<\/em><\/p>\n

‘For us, what\u2019s important is that the football\u2019s one component but the character\u2019s the other component.’<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“If you want to end up being champions at the end of the year, you\u2019ve got to show that at different times and I thought we did today.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe guys who come on are there to do a job, to add some energy and inject some tempo to the game and I thought all the guys who came on did that really well today.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWe get contributions from everywhere. Last year it was Tony Ralston who got a last-minute winner, now it\u2019s Greg, and it\u2019s a credit to them that they keep persisting in our football, believing in ourselves, and they get their rewards.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI thought it was a cracking game. I\u2019m not one that gets too thrilled with clean sheets, depending on how the game\u2019s going. I\u2019d much rather win 4-3 than 1-0 and that\u2019s what we did today.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In Strine, the Australian version of English, the polite way to swear is by masking “fuck off ” with a cough.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When you watch Ange in press conferences, you may notice how many times he, er, expresses astonishment or surprise at the ridiculous questions he’s asked with a little , hardly noticeable until you look for it, er, clearing of the throat.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Forrest incident was interesting, with BBC Scotland’s “experts all agreeing it was a penalty, except for Michael Stewart, who it must now be said is fully house trained by the state broadcaster.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Pity, he used to be worth listening to.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Keith Jackson, the Record hack who wouldn;t need to be house trained should he ever end up at the BBC, gave us his thoughts on the 21st Century tech being used by people with their hearts and minds firmly entrenched in the Seventeenth…..<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

By throwing around words such as \u2018scandalous\u2019 and suggesting\u00a0Celtic<\/a> were up against two teams at Tynecastle on Saturday they were stoking a toxic, cliched old fire. Come on lads, you\u2019re better than that. The very last thing the game in this country needs is more deliberate fanning of the flames at a time when our accident-prone officials are being ordered to jump out of the frying pan. It was hard enough when only one of them was calling the shots.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And now there are two they can make twice as many errors.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The problem lies not with the technology, but with the diddies operating it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As Jackson says<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

After all, the technology does not yet exist that can unblow a referee\u2019s whistle.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Er, it does, sort of…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Referee<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What is needed now is even more transparency,, because until the conversations between referee and VAR operator are made public, preferably aired live, we won’t know, and therefore will speculate, what they were thinking at the time.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Or singing, for that matter.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

On Friday, we had this…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Image\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n
The great suprendo<\/em><\/div>\n
\u00a02 days ago<\/em><\/div>\n
\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n

The SFA\u2019s new VAR operatives ably demonstrate their dedication to their new motto \u2018semper vigilo\u2019\u00a0 \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Today….<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Tom<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

VAR made it’s long awaited debut in Scottish football at the weekend.   Celtic had two goals chalked off and two penalties awarded against them,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":18006,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/etims.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/maxresdefault-4.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2J7If-4Gp","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18005"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18005"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18005\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18007,"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18005\/revisions\/18007"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/etims.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}