There are two ways of interpreting Ange Postecoglou’s sudden outpouring of VAR related prickliness. And after all the colour and positives he has brought to our game over the last 18 months, perhaps this relative newcomer deserves to be cut a bit of slack where this uncharacteristic bout of self pitying is concerned.
Yes, on Friday, when the normally laid back big Aussie began bumping his gums over some of the refereeing decisions made at Ibrox a week ago, it did all feel like a horribly familiar blast from the not too distant past. For a moment, he could have been borrowing Tom Boyd’s tinfoil hat. But indulging in spiteful irrationalism just doesn’t seem like Postecoglou’s style.
In particular, Celtic’s manager has found it impossible to fathom why his side were not awarded a penalty kick when Connor Goldson batted away Carl Starfelt’s shot with two hands inside his own box in what was deemed by John Beaton and Willie Collum to be a natural, reflex action. And, yes, the old ‘it wouldn’t have happened at the other end of the pitch’ stuff played perfectly into the well worn narrative of Celtic’s deep rooted distrust of authority.
But by simply dismissing Postecoglou as the latest fully paid up member of the old paranoia club might well be to do the Parkhead manager a disservice. Because, when you listen carefully to what he was actually saying, there was a significant message buried somewhere in there - and one with which it’s difficult to disagree.
Postecoglou’s point was not that Scotland’s officials are bending over backwards in a concerted effort to do favours for Rangers. He’s bigger and better than that. Rather, he was attempting to explain that all hell would most likely have broken loose had the Ibrox side been on the receiving end of such a controversial decision at the other end of the pitch.
Not because they’re Rangers. But because that one isolated incident could have been held up as a potentially ‘title defining’ moment had it prevented the chasers from taking a sizable chunk out of the gap at the top of the table.
It is Postecoglou’s assertion that, because Celtic were able to get back across the Clyde with a 2-2 draw and their nine point lead intact, the matter can be safely put to bed without the need for further scrutiny. Effectively, Postecoglou was suggesting that the Goldson incident can be brushed under the big lumpy carpet which runs the length of Hampden’s sixth floor.
Given that he was still being asked questions about it, four days after the event, suggests he’s guilty at the very least of gilding the lily. Trust us Ange, it didn’t pass unnoticed. They’ll still be squabbling about it in this part of the world 20 years from now. That’s just the way it works here.
And yet, it seems to this observer at least, that Postecoglou’s main argument was bang on the money. The introduction of VAR to Scottish football’s asylum has not provided the sanity and order it was meant to deliver.
On the contrary, this new toy at Clydesdale House has merely added another layer of impenetrable confusion to a backdrop of general chaos. Not because there’s some sort of sinister skulduggery at play.
But because IFAB’s hand-ball rule is an unqualified shambles and, in their well intended attempts to apply it, our officials are tripping over it on a match-by-match basis. As a consequence, our game is rapidly becoming an even bigger circus than it already was and Postecoglou is absolutely correct to call for some kind of clarity to prevail.
Because, as things stand, VAR is now being distorted by some as conclusive proof that all the long held suspicions were justified. That the constant whispering inside their own heads wasn’t a sign of bampottery all along. ‘That’s why they’ve called it VAR - the Voices Are Right!’.
And yet this one is not simply Celtic’s problem. There has been a tsunami of penalty kick awards for various hand-ball offences since the new technology was rolled out and a great many of them have been beyond baffling. If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck then Scotland’s refs will invariably find a way of calling it a cat.
So Postecoglou was also correct when he pointed out that his club is not the only one struggling to make sense of this scattergun approach to decision making. Let’s not forget, paranoia doesn’t come wrapped up in a scarf of any particular colour.
At various times, mostly over the last decade or so, Rangers have acted like a paranoid wreck of a football club - jabbing all manner of accusatory fingers at individual match officials and even at entire governing bodies. They’ve churned out a catalogue of rambling, mean spirited statements and launched one legal action after the other while convincing themselves the whole world is out to get them.
The awkward truth is, feverish paranoia off the pitch is usually symptomatic of a prolonged lack of success on it. In other words, ‘Don’t blame us - it’s all someone else’s fault!’. That’s why Celtic disappeared down the rabbit hole back in the 1990’s and it’s where Rangers have been fretting for so long throughout these last few years of sporadic, fleeting success.
The lesson from it all is that such dark places are almost always best avoided. Postecoglou would be well advised not to make a habit of straying off in that direction. But that doesn’t mean, on this occasion, that Celtic’s manager doesn’t have a point.
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