Version of VAR ‘not suitable’ say Dons

ABERDEEN have claimed VAR is having a negative impact on Scottish football after discovering officials effectively “guessed” that their stoppage-time winner at Livingston should be disallowed following a technical failure.

The Dons saw their hopes of a cinch Premiership top-six finish disappear when Bojan Miovski’s goal was disallowed for an offside against Angus MacDonald in the build-up.

Aberdeen argued their “relative public silence” on VAR issues was “no longer tenable” following talks with the Scottish Football Association on the decision and hearing transcripts from the match officials.

The talks revealed the video assistants were unable to calibrate the lines because of a camera failure, instead freezing the footage to determine by eye, as is allowed by the VAR protocols. Video assistant Matthew MacDermid decided MacDonald was offside.

The SFA later produced retrospective footage to prove the right decision had been made in the end.

The club said: “What this situation demonstrates, in our opinion, is that the version of VAR that Scottish football has, or more accurately, can afford, is not suitable for the purpose in which it is intended.

“It perfectly highlights the limitations in the technology, the inappropriate implementation, the consistency of decisionmaking and the negative impact on the overall experience for the matchgoing supporter.

“This is, of course, not an issue that we believe is in any way exclusive to Aberdeen FC. We are not being partisan because we believe a decision, or at least a process, has not been at all effective at the weekend.

“We acknowledge there have been occasions where we ourselves have been fortunate to have benefited from some of the observations and limitations raised.”

The SFA said Hawkeye’s review confirmed the relevant camera had suffered a “loss of calibration”.