No club will influence referee appointments- Crawford Allan’s laughable claim

Crawford Allan has insisted that refereeing appointments won’t be dictated to him by clubs despite the evidence suggesting that he takes his orders from Ibrox.

Following the December Glasgow Derby the Ibrox Tribute Act went to war with three statements to media messengers culminating with a request that Willie Collum isn’t involved in any of their fixtures.

Allan selects the three senior officials for every match with Collum excluded from all five SPFL fixtures played this year by Philippe Clement’s side.

In an obvious attempt to show that he won’t be dictated to Allan put the controversial Lanarkshire referee in charge of the Scottish Cup tie against Ayr with Collum going out of his way to give favourable decisions to the home club.

Matthew MacDermid will referee Sunday’s match away to St Johnstone with Stewart Luke as Fourth Official and Ally McCoist’s buddy Greg Aitken on VAR duty.

Explaining how he makes his appointments, Allan told the Daily Record:

At no point will a club influence a decision of a referee appointment in Scotland. I can categorically state that the Scottish FA will appoint referees to the best of that person’s experience, ability and professionalism.

We will be appointing referees as their experience and profile is appropriate for. We totally reject any request from any club that a referee would not be considered for their club appointments.

We don’t want to make any massive headlines from one referee. It doesn’t matter if it’s one person’s name out there, it affects all the referees. We have to protect them all.

I have had a similar request from a club in tier 5 recently, asking that a referee didn’t do their games. I think they were potentially jumping on a bandwagon.

The SFA made no on the record reply to the complaints about the officials at the December Glasgow Derby despite the request made about Collum.

Nick Walsh, the referee in the defeat from Celtic has also been left out of matches involving the Tribute Act resulting in John Beaton and Alan Muir both being put in charge of two of their matches this year.

In season 2018/19 Collum went six months without refereeing a match involving Steven Gerrard’s side after the issued a complaint about a decision that earned them a £6,000 fine.