Celtic’s manager Martin O’Neill has delivered a withering assessment of VAR in Scottish football after what he called the “ridiculous” dismissal of Auston Trusty during Sunday’s loss by Hibernian. Trusty’s red card and a failed Celtic appeal mean the centre-back will miss three crucial Scottish Premiership games, starting with Sunday’s Old Firm visit to Ibrox. O’Neill claimed VAR actions must be “debilitating” for on-field officials.
Trusty reacted angrily to the attentions of Hibs’ Jamie McGrath at a Celtic corner. The referee Matthew MacDermid appeared content the incident was worthy of no sanction but was sent to review the incident by the VAR Grant Irvine. To O’Neill, the game was re-refereed.
“The referee, as he told me on Sunday, has seen the incident,” O’Neill explained. “It is not as if he hadn’t seen it, he is watching it. He is asked by a very excited man on VAR, saying: ‘Delay, delay, delay, delay.’ They ask him [the referee] and he says: ‘It’s nothing, I’m just going to have a word with the players.’ Then he has to trot over to change his mind. It is ridiculous.
“It is such a nonsense. I am all for people that missed something dramatic in a game, that constitutes something they should have a look at. But when a referee sees the incident himself then what he is being asked to do is: ‘No, you didn’t see that. You saw something else.’ That has got to be debilitating for a referee. It has got to be.
“In time we won’t need a referee. VAR will do it from wherever they are doing it from, because that is what they did. They have asked the referee to overturn something that he has actually seen. It is not as if he missed the incident which of course would be a different issue.”
A clearly perplexed O’Neill, speaking in Germany before the second leg of Celtic’s Europa League tie with Stuttgart, has no issue with the basic concept of VAR. Instead he has questioned the form it is taking in Scotland.
“Trusty was sent off for being the last man against Hearts,” he added. “The same thing happened. The referee said he gave a yellow card because he thought the ball was going away and the referee was there and closer to the incident. He saw the incident and he was called over to change it.
“If VAR has spotted some things that are blatant, two boys having a fight in the corner or something and it’s missed, I can understand that.”
Celtic head into this second leg with a 4-1 and apparently insurmountable deficit. O’Neill is likely to leave out a few senior players with the key trip to Ibrox in mind. “They’ve all played in the first team so whoever we put out it won’t mean a ‘weakened’ team,” O’Neill said. “They are all capable players.”
