Not paying for VAR will cost game dear

THERE is a faint sadness in listening to Rangers manager Steven Gerrard talk about the benefits that would come from full-time referees and wider use of goal-line technology. A sense of melancholy and resignation when listening to Neil Lennon discuss, once again, the vagaries of the SFA’s impenetrable compliance system.

When Jim Goodwin attempts to rekindle the conversation about Video Assistant Referees, the heart just sinks to the floor.

This is Scottish football in a microcosm. Going round and round in circles, jabbering on about the same old problems year after year and doing nothing to sort them out.

It makes for a ready supply of headlines and talking points but it has become boring. And depressing. Like having a dissolute uncle tell you that this is the year he is going to get his act together — before ordering a Jagerbomb to go with his pint of snakebite and being found doing the backstroke in the latrine. Eventually, you just switch off and give up.

The dogs in the street know what is needed to get Scottish football out of this particular morass. It’s the suits in boardrooms that are — and always have been — the issue.

We were here 12 months ago when a stormy Old Firm derby — the one that saw Celtic’s Ryan Christie banned for a spot of jockstrap

billiards with Alfredo

Morelos, Rangers coach Michael Beale accuse referee Kevin Clancy of cheating and Morelos have a yellow card for a throat-slitting gesture apparently hushed-up for weeks — brought the frustration created by a long run of unfathomable decisions, outcomes and refereeing performances to a head.

Twelve months before that, things were so bad that the SFA’s chief executive Ian Maxwell went as far as holding a meeting with referees and managers at McDiarmid Park.

It was hailed as a huge success by the usual suspects. The intervening period has shown, as anyone with half a brain could have predicted, that it was nothing other than a monumental waste of time.

Lennon spoke on behalf of the managers present after its conclusion. ‘The most unanimous decision amongst the referees and managers was on VAR,’ he reported. ‘There were no voices raised and everyone came out feeling better about things.’

Yes. And look where we are now. Back with Lennon and Gerrard, and pretty much everyone else on the shop floor of Scottish football, shouting into the wind over refereeing and re-refereeing and a disciplinary system that few of them seem to be able to understand.

At the time, Maxwell’s view on bringing in VAR was clear. ‘Scottish football can afford it and, ultimately, it will come down to a club decision,’ he stated. He promised to go off and investigate costs with SPFL sidekick Neil Doncaster.

If they ever did come back with an answer, it was never declared publicly. Never talked through with anyone else who might have a passing interest such as fans and players and coaches. It is just taken as read now that it is too expensive — even though evidence from other countries suggests otherwise. It is almost a dirty word, an embarrassing subject best kept out of sight. Like rebuilding Hampden. Or finding a sponsor for the league.

Back when that box-ticking exercise in Perth took place, Lennon was manager of Hibs, Gerrard was just getting his feet under the table at Ibrox and Brendan Rodgers was in charge at Celtic Park.

The more things change, though, the more they stay the same.

Rodgers’ big idea was to demand full-time referees. Steve Clarke, then manager of Kilmarnock and fresh from slaughtering the SFA over their appeals process, requested the same change from a distance after failing to show at the get-together.

The problem is that it would cost money, too. It would involve officials picking up the thick end of a grand-a-game on top of their normal wages being asked to give up their day jobs. It hasn’t happened and isn’t going to happen — although it should.

We are going through a puzzling period in which our officials seem incapable of picking up on brutal challenges — or punishing them correctly even when they do.

St Mirren boss Goodwin also has a bee in his bonnet about diving. It seems a peculiar issue to focus on when we are regularly seeing tackles verging on GBH missed or, even worse, permitted to pass, but it is all grist to the mill.

Whatever your personal bugbear, it all adds up to the same thing. The levels of officiating here aren’t good enough. They aren’t strict enough either.

Made at the end of his first season here, it is the observations of Ibrox first-team coach Beale that continue to resonate more than most. He warned the physical nature of the Premiership would drive talented young players away. He criticised the leniency that existed towards ‘industrial tackles’.

If fans were proud of that, he warned, they have to ‘accept that might cause some issues later on.’

We are surely at that point now. At times, we are all guilty of celebrating the unvarnished nature of Scottish football a little too lustily. We laugh over its foul-ups, its failures, its club TV streams and their talk of the commentators’ toilet habits.

It gets to a point, though, when being seen as a two-bob operation becomes damaging. Managers and players aren’t being listened to by those above them in the food chain. Referees don’t feel supported. Anger over mistakes and inconsistencies from part-time officials and a failing compliance system dominate the narrative and are in danger of blotting out all else.

For how much longer are the likes of Gerrard going to see value in being part of this environment? How will other proficient coaches and players be attracted to a league that appears to have no interest in keeping up with the times? Where will big sponsorship come from against such a backdrop?

VAR, for example, is used in Chile, Egypt, Morocco and Thailand among others. Ghana are now making noises about bringing it into their set-up.

For all its well-documented faults, it offers a joined-up solution to so many of our game’s current ills along with full-time refs and a more transparent disciplinary system.

Yet, club directors have always felt there are better things to spend the budget on. Covid just makes these cries for change from even the most high-profile managers seem ever more futile.

What the guys on the ground feel would help doesn’t matter. Backroom politics and short-term considerations always come before long-term benefits here.

In many regards, a story of our times. And one in which little real thought is given to the true price likely to be paid in the end.

Backroom politics always come before any long-term benefits here