Will the SFA dare to charge Brendan Rodgers after he accuses John Beaton?

Brendan Rodgers has put the focus on the SFA after claiming that John Beaton cost Celtic today’s match away to Hearts.

Interventions from the VAR prompted Don Robertson to send off Yang Hun-jun in the 16^th minute after initially awarding a yellow card for a high challenge.

Shortly before half-time Beaton picked up on a clearly accidental close range handball by Tomoki Iwata, Robertson reviewed the incident then went with the view of his colleague to award Hearts a penalty which opened the scoring.

Beaton has plenty of previous in Celtic matches involving penalties, in January 2023 at Ibrox he refused to award a penalty against Connor Goldson for a double handball from a Carl Starfelt shot, earlier he had pounced to award a penalty against the Swedish defender when Fashion Sakala dived in with a challenge then celebrated with fans behind the goal as a penalty was awarded.

Celtic CEO Michael Nicholson gave match officials a free pass at the 2022 AGM when he explained teething troubles with the introduction of VAR to the SPFL, at the 2023 AGM he was asked about decisions by Beaton in a match against St Mirren and responded with a gag about Penalty Rangers.

With Rodgers calling out Beaton twice during his interview with Sky Sports the onus is now on the SFA to hit the Celtic boss with a disrepute charge.

I never like to comment on the officials, that’s not something I do but that cost us today the officiating, from on field from John Beaton on VAR. That was really, really poor.

The first incident – if you put a still on that of course it looks dangerous but that’s not the reality of the move. There’s no force there, the ball’s popped up, okay it’s a booking. That was really disappointing to go down to ten men with that.

But to receive the penalty against us. Wow. That was even worse. If you watch the incident again, Tomo (Iwata) has jumped, he’s on his way down, he’s not looking. He’s been nudged a little bit which pushes his arm out.

If that’s a penalty then you will have penalties every single game, every single week in a match because of that. We had one last week away at Motherwell, Casey puts his arm up and it hits him.

But that there is absolutely shocking decision making. I feel really really disappointed. We’re down a man we get a poor penalty against us and all of a sudden you’re chasing the game.

You’ve got to look at the reality of the action and the move. If you freeze frame, which we see all the time, it looks dangerous.

That wasn’t the reality of the move you’ve got to see it in the whole context of everything.

I thought the officials were very very poor and like I say, it was really really disappointing. You actually have to ask John Beaton in VAR what he’s seeing.

Because if he’s seeing dangerous play, the handball, he’s probably seeing something different to everyone else.

I just think they’re seeing a different game. It’s incidents like that – that’s why referees and officials get challenged because that’s not knowing the game. That’s not seeing the game.