kingjoey

You do realise that Hamilton’s pitch is a new one this season?

Yep, that’s just how I remember things from that day.

I can’t see Celtic paying or offering £6 million for McKenna. He may or may not be worth that, but Aberdeen will definitely not sell him for any less.

I must have been concentrating on the great football on show.

If we’re both haddies, why are you so concerned?

I didn’t hear that once last night.

Sexism. Not all teachers are female, you know.

Not long in from the match and enjoyed reading through the last few pages. The win tonight has to dedicated to the St Johnstone fans on tonight desperate for a Livi win. Unlucky guys. Superb second half display with Connor McLennan making the difference right from the start of the half. Max Lowe again great for us, and I really hope no Derby full backs are injured going into January/February. I know he’s supposed to be a goalscorer, but Stevie May had a really good match tonight other than the goal side of things. Cosgrove and McGinn decent games and what a finish (reprise) from Derek’s laddie. All in all a good night for us.

Why are you always angry on here? Posters like weegienative appear every now and again to rile everyone up and disappear until they come back a few months later under a different name.

I see what you did there.

No, it means that the idea that VAR is some kind of panacea is nonsense as there will still be mistakes and there will still be different interpretations of the laws of the game. If that's the case, why bother having a system that has so many other problems (communication, stopping the game, inequality of provision, etc)? It's interesting to me that the Germans don't like it and the Italians aren't keen either. Countries who have it don't seem to like it, but countries that don't seem to want it. Maybe the grass isn't actually greener when seen through a VAR screen? Of course there will still be mistakes. But why would anyone with an ounce of common sense not want a system that reduces mistakes by, let’s say to err on the low side 75%, not want to use that? Ok, if we can’t afford it, we can’t afford it, but I for one would have it in a shot if it was feasible.

Well I'm that case it would be the "Goal-line Technology" using Hawkeye, which isn't open to interpretation (unless you're Jonathan Pearce) making the decision, which I'm happy to go with as the machine doesn't feel pressure. Let's say that instead of hitting the bar and going in/not that McGhee or whomever has a goalbound header that hits a Rangers* player on the arm. He doesn't see it, but he's told to look at it again by the VAR. So he goes to his monitor, where 50,000 Rangers fans are screaming abuse at him, Stevie Gerrard is right next to the screen he's using etc. Is he likely to say "aye, fair enough - penalty" or is he going to say "accidental/hit the shoulder - original decision stands"? Now let's go the other way, and it's a Morelos header that hits McGhee somewhere near the top of the arm/shoulder. What do you think the ref does when when it's referred for another look? There are many, many problems with VAR, but the biggest one is that referees are still making the decisions, are still under pressure (even more so when something they've missed is being looked at) and as seen at the World Cup, are still capable of fairly obvious errors. This “as seen in the Workd Cup” irks me. Because maybe, what, 5% of VAR decisions are still wrong, does that mean we don’t want a system that corrects, or confirms, that 95% of referred decisions are corrected?

You have to go and spoil it. It was a sort of serious point though, unless I have forgotten something, Celtic have got off pretty lightly on the referee cock ups this season.

I think that someone needs to tell James McFadden that his employers, the SFA, also are in charge of Scotland’s referees. Not for the first time tonight, he was really putting the boot into our referees.

While listening to Sportsound tonight, I was thinking of the teams in the top division that have been dealt major problems by referees this season. Not for one second do,I think that referees in our game are biased, but do feel that they must be swayed by crowd pressure. So off the top of my head I can think of the following teams, some more than once, that have had awful decisions made against them. Rangers, Kilmarnock, Hearts, Aberdeen, Hibs, Motherwell and Dundee. Is this maybe the reason that Celtic are top of the league? I can’t remember a single occasion this season when they have been on the end of a potentially result changing decision.