With the speed that Celtic attack at there are bound to be a number of offside close calls.
In both halves today against Hearts there were a few very close calls with the assistant linesmen both deciding to play it safe by flagging rather than get drawn into any retrospective reviews on Sportscene.
Last December there was a close call when Kyogo Furuhashi scored the only goal of the game against Robbie Neilson’s side, despite no conclusive evidence Kris Boyd appeared to be on some sort of crusade. He even forced Crawford Allan onto Radio Scotland to say nothing in particular.
This was given as offside ? pic.twitter.com/zrE3B0WxcC
— RjayBhoy (@RjayCeltic) August 21, 2022
The image above was flagged as offside, in many marginal calls you can put it down to human error but there was no excuse for the assistant on the Main Stand side.
Hearts left-back Alex Cochrane was badly out of line with his team-mates, there was clear daylight between Kyogo and the last defender, unfortunately the flag went up for offside.
VAR is expected to be introduced to Scottish football before the November break for the World Cup Finals in Qatar.
Another reason why a victory against Hearts is always a good result!
You need strong Assistant Referees and strong Referees!
It’s called cheating ! There were so many simple decisions today that were “dishonest mistakes ! ” The linesmen played one half each.
Even though I still scream my head off during games, I know that Celtic will have to beat the bigoted, backwater, orange, shithole, establishment as well as the players who turn up on the field of play against them. 60years of age and I still am not “used” to it. ye wid think ah wid learn ????
In real time, that ‘offside’ call was so obviously wrong.
Would VAR even be applied to this type of referee / linesman error?
If it was, would it just be a drop ball at the ‘offside’ player’s position?
My worry is that the SFA / SPFL will introduce its very own ‘Scottish version’ of VAR – with plenty of scope to infuriate players, managers and supporters.
If VAR is implemented correctly then the answer is yes it would be applied .. IF the watching VAR ref hadnt got blue tinted glasses on of course. Over here in Portugal as it involved a possible (probable) scoring chance then it would be assessed and the famous lines would be used to show the distance between the player and the last defender, now if it was Billy from Larkhall in charge of drawing the lines then there may be an issue.