Warning goes out to John Beaton and Willie Collum over shambles

Chris Sutton fears that Monday’s Glasgow Derby could turn into a shambles by VAR.

Scottish football was late to join the party with VAR introduced to the SPFL in mid-October, a full four years after it had first been used in the major leagues.

The message put out was the SFA didn’t want to be rushed and were ensuring that problems in other countries wouldn’t be repeated.

There had been a clamour for VAR to be brought in but there has barely been a complimentary word said about the system with confusion across the board- especially over penalties.

In the first five fixtures with VAR operating Celtic had four penalties awarded against them. Despite their winning record and superior goal difference Ange Postecoglou’s side have only been awarded two penalties in 19 matches.

It seems that referees are holding back on decisions, waiting for a prompt from their VAR colleagues with fans in the stadium left in the dark over what is going on.

Offside checks can take more than two minutes with additional time erratically added despite regular pauses of two or three minutes on top of the traditional breaks in play.

Since the World Cup there has been no noticeable improvement with the relationship between referee, touchline monitor and the distant VAR appearing at best un-coordinated.

On Monday two Lanarkshire officials, John Beaton and Willie Collum will have a major bearing on the second Glasgow derby with Sutton warning Daily Record readers what could be in store:

I just worry about what is going to happen and whether the game is going to descend into a farce. Beaton has to be strong and must make the right calls at the correct time.

And Collum in the VAR bunker should only get involved if it’s necessary or there’s a serious injustice. The Old Firm is a showcase fixture. We can’t let it turn into a shambles.

Don Robertson will be the fourth official on the touchline at Ibrox, Collum will have full access to all of the Sky Sports cameras to make his decisions.