Really poor officiating- Rodgers in explosive BBC interview as he calls out Beaton

At Motherwell last week his sign off to Jane Lewis created days of headlines, debate and discussion.

After losing at Hearts today Brendan Rodgers put Celtic’s defeat firmly on John Beaton with unprecedented criticism of the VAR.

A red card for Yang Hun-jun after 15 minutes followed by a 42^nd minute penalty to Hearts upset the Celtic boss, pushing him into detailed criticism of the match officials.

Both decisions were prompted by John Beaton on VAR duty, Don Robertson twice visited the monitor and opted to go with the instructions from his off-field colleague.

Rodgers was highly critical of Beaton when he spoke after the match to Sky Sports, that was also the focus of his interview with BBC Scotland:

The first incident with the sending off – there’s no force in that.

If you make a still [image], of course it gives you a different opinion but the reality was not that. The referee made a right decision of a yellow card.

That’s a clear example of what people say VAR isn’t. The game was refereed outside the field today. That means we get a sending off.

The second one is even worse. Tomoki gets a nudge, I don’t know where his arm is supposed to go. The ball drops on to his arm. If that’s the case, we should have had a penalty at Motherwell last week.

For John Beaton to say that is a penalty – wow. It’s really really poor officiating in a big game for us.

With such direct references to Beaton it seems inevitable that the SFA will hit Rodgers with a disrepute charge, something that he has avoided in two stints in charge of Celtic.