A credit to his decision making- Keith Jackson shares his praise for John Beaton’s Ibrox performance

Keith Jackson has praised John Beaton’s performance in the Glasgow Derby despite having to overturn three key decisions after VAR reviews.

Getting three major decisions wrong over 90 minutes is quite a statistic, had VAR the authority to review more incidents it is hard to come to any other conclusion that Beaton blundered through the whole match.

In the Daily Record Jackson explained:

A word at this point for referee John Beaton who went into the middle of this chaotic derby day as its pantomime villain in waiting and under colossal, intolerable amounts of pressure. That he emerged from it with his professional reputation in one piece was a credit to his decision making at key moments, as well as the guidance he received from Nick Walsh from the comparative safety of the VAR bunker.

Together they had three huge calls to make and they applied the textbook to each of them. 

In the first half Beaton missed Connor Goldson using his elbow to deflect cross away from Liam Scales before Walsh on VAR highlighted the contact.

After initially booking Fabio Silva for simulation he reviewed the incident and decided to award a penalty.

With a close up view of Tom Lawrence fouling Tomoki Iwata in the build up to a ‘goal’ from Cyriel Dessers Beaton waved play on, after the celebrations had died down a VAR review was called with the match restarting with a free kick to Celtic.

Brendan Rodgers was back on the touchline after serving a one match touchline ban for calling Beaton incompetent following his performance on VAR at last month’s defeat from Hearts.

At Ibrox with 46% possession Celtic had 23 fouls awarded against them with just four in their favour. Four Celtic players were booked, none from the home side.