VAR is, and will be, at the forefront of Celtic fans’ minds and after St Mirren’s defeat to Hibernian last night, the Parkhead support are talking about it once again.
The video refereeing technology was at the heart of Celtic’s win over Rangers in the Premier Sports Cup last weekend as VAR missed a multitude of decisions in the game.
One of the biggest decisions that VAR got involved with was when they decided that Celtic hero Daizen Maeda was offside in the run up to the own goal scored by Rangers midfielder Nico Raskin.
The Celtic striker was said to have had a heel on the red offside VAR line when Benjamin Nygren played the quick free kick to open up the scoring.
And it appears that the exact same instance happened in St Mirren’s 3-0 defeat to Hibernian last night and Michael Stewart’s comments about VAR appear to have spiked a big reaction from Celtic supporters.
Michael Stewart cries St Mirren VAR ‘cover up’ after Celtic silence
Stewart was on Premier Sports duty for the Scottish Premiership tie between St Mirren and Hibs when the Buddies got a goal chalked off for the same type of incident in Celtic’s win over Rangers.
Speaking about the offside given, Stewart decried the images and lines used and said, “You can talk about cameras for us to visually look at it, but you’ve got people that are in the studio that are rolling frames forward and back, and they’re having to calibrate and everything like that.
“But what we’ve seen there is there was a human error made in terms of where they drew the first line. The second one has been used on a different frame.
“I think it’s too close to call, so many decisions, on a system that I’m not sure is being used the way it should be getting done. And if you’re like that, and you’re making big calls and goals are being disallowed, I don’t think it should continue.
When asked if VAR should be ‘chucked’ Stewart continued, “Yes, absolutely. We spoke about this before and said, I think to speed things up as well, VAR should be looking at things for a few seconds and then determining without drawing lines, do they stick with on field decision or not?
“There’s a mistake been made there, and they’re trying to cover it up. And I think that has shown the system is flawed.”
Powerful words by Stewart which are a far cry from what he said about Maeda’s call, and Celtic supporters spotted it straight away.
Why Celtic fans are flocking to Michael Stewart’s VAR comments
As soon as Stewart uttered those words, Celtic supporters sent the Premier Sports man a reminder about what happened at Hampden last weekend.
@KR1888C spotted the offside and called out its similarity to last week’s and noted Stewart’s silence and replied, “Sounds similar to last weeks offside goal that got next to no coverage as you’d imagine.”
This sentiment continues as @Damo96457158 said, “They also used the wrong frame for Celtic’s disallowed goal in last week’s semi final, yet nobody is calling that out.”
@p_bov1 replied, “They’ve made the same “mistake” that they did for the Raskin OG at Hampden last weekend which we’ve seen they used the wrong frame to draw the lines. Maeda was onside on the correct frame.
“Same issue tonight. Wrong frame, wrong point of contact, and wrong defensive line. Shambles.”
And finally:
It appears that as VAR continues to get the big calls wrong, pundits and fans alike are getting fed up with what they are being served from the Scottish FA week in, week out.
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