It’s a blessing to us all that we don’t have VAR in SPFL

WE GENUINELY haven’t thought this out, have we? Simply leapt at the false promise of unattainable perfection and a sales pitch offering No More Mistakes. Ever.

Well, our collective failure to see past this fantasy of football without flaws is now imperilling the very game we love, and sometimes hate, with such unwise passion.

Mercifully, for those deeply invested in the Scottish game, we can still save ourselves from the paralysis by analysis driving our nominal betters round the twist.

Salvation lies in ignoring the clamour to introduce a Video Assistant Referee system capable of awarding penalties by the width of a single pixel, catching offside calls imperceptible to the human eye — or using frame-by-frame replays to reclassify accidental contact as violent conduct.

And we need look no further than the noisy neighbours next door for proof of what we’re ‘missing’. We see you, England. We hear you, too. Clamouring for a simpler age. Oh, the irony.

Even our nearest and dearest friends down south, those who see right through the calculated baiting of click-chasing shock jocks, enjoy winding us up about the differences between our respective domestic competitions.

Compared to the Premier League, they’ll tell us with a mischievous grin, you Scots don’t even play the same game.

You’re right. And dare we say that, for all the superior technique, strength and spending power of the world’s wealthiest footballing competition, Scottish fans are actually getting the better bargain?

Because, yes, a typically fractious weekend of SPFL Premiership action prompted all the usual suspects to sound off about the absence of VAR.

But anyone enjoying Premier League content over Saturday and Sunday, with all its goals and glory, would have been given fresh reason to resist such a move.

Down south, a combination of repeated law changes, variable guidelines and constant tweaking of priorities — all under the watchful eye of 38 ultra-HD cameras — is beginning to fee like an evil plot to get football stopped.

Having already wrecked the rhythm of play, forcing everyone to wait for even seemingly straightforward goals to be ‘verified’ by a higher power, VAR is certainly changing the way footballers play the game.

Soon they’ll be so frightened of being caught out by some loophole that they’ll be running around with arms constantly tucked behind their backs, while committing never to stretching for a 45/55 challenge. Just in case.

And they will shy away from even trying any sort of fancy flicks, lest they inadvertently catch an opponent instead of the ball. An offence that now carries a lengthy ban.

Seriously, take a look at the ‘horror challenge’ by Brighton’s Yves Bissouma in Sunday’s 3-0 win over Newcastle. The Malian was trying to bring a bit of flair, looking to execute a no-look piece of improvisation that, if successful, would have been replayed endlessly as an example of why the beautiful game is so beloved by so many.

It didn’t work out. So it becomes a ‘brutal studs-up challenge’ in the eyes of the authorities.

Think of all the great goals that might never have been attempted, the scissor and bicycle kicks, if players had been conditioned to fear the worst every time they raised a foot in hope of doing the spectacular.

Now consider whether all of the above is a price worth paying, just to satisfy our local baying mob.

According to the noisiest of them, the SFA/SPFL are both too tight to invest in the technology — and terrified that the appalling incompetence of referees will be highlighted on a regular basis. Your team was done in by a linesman not lifting a flag? Denied a penalty that would have been awarded had the ref been able to view an extreme close-up of ‘clear contact’? Did the keeper’s big toe stray an inch off the line when he saved that spot-kick? All of that can be eradicated at the flick of a remote control. Just sign here — and pay no attention to how fans elsewhere are beginning to curse this cure-all for football’s essential inconsistencies.

Look, we got here by honest means and motive. When so many of us were embracing the idea of retrospective punishment and video evidence being used to overturn decisions, our intentions were noble.

But doing all of those fine and upstanding things has led us here. To a place where even managers on the ‘right side’ of handball decisions shake their heads and bemoan the lack of common sense.

Scotland isn’t there yet. And, for all its many imperfections, our game still has an organic quality. We should enjoy that while we can.

And we should consider the plight of our Premier League-supporting pals who now regularly show up on social media in an awful state. Inevitably using that GIF from

the one showing Richard E Grant and Paul McGann looking soaked and miserable, they’ll tweak the famous line with a caption reading: ‘We’ve walked into a dystopian sporting nightmare by mistake…’