Alistair Johnston shares what really annoyed him about Celtic’s VAR controversy

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A week has passed and the fallout from VAR continues as Celtic defender Alistair Johnston has his say on what happened last Sunday at Tynecastle.

Although all the major decisions that were made by the match officials have been deemed as being wrong, Johnston has shared what his biggest annoyance was in the evaluation of Hyunjun Yang’s ordering off.

Johnston said [The Herald], “It takes a lot of the context out of it. My solution to it would be to make it as simple as possible, would be to say you are not allowed to make slo-mos of any tackle.

“You have to watch it in real-time. Because I find whenever you put a tackle into slo-mo everything looks worse than what it really is.

“That was my biggest gripe with the red card to Yang – the ref saw it in live time and didn’t really think there was any intent. And there was no intent. Of course, his foot was high and I agree that when you put your foot high you run the risk.

“But I think everyone knew there was no intention there. He didn’t really catch him at all. I think then when you slow it down and freeze it then things can get taken out of context.

“That was my biggest thing. On the pitch, the ref thought it was a yellow, everyone on the pitch thought it was a yellow so move on with it.

“But then you go to VAR and from there, anything can happen.”

VAR needs addressed after Celtic mess

If there is one thing that has come out of last weekend’s VAR mess it’s that almost every football fan, pundit and former player is in agreement that something needs to change in the application of the video technology.

Looking at how Yang’s challenge was presented to Don Robertson by John Beaton, it is no surprise that the on-field match official changed his mind and saw it as a red.

Any action slowed down to the point where it’s a still image can look awful when presented like it was last week as it does look like Yang was forceful with his high boot.

And the irony is that if Beaton had played the whole clip at match speed, I would imagine that Robertson would have stuck by his, correct, original decision and left his red card in his pocket.

Hopefully, after Rodgers’ hearing on the 28th of March, the SFA will go away and learn from this. Hopefully, the match officials do as well.

Because mistakes like the Tynecastle ones could prove costly in the title race and Celtic’s pursuit of the £60m Champions League bounty at the end of it.