It’s fair to say that the League Cup Final turned out to be an interesting spectacle in more than one way. The swirling Hampden wind, incessant rain and slippery conditions made it tough for the players but the mistakes this led to made it quite a spectacle for the fans in the stadium and those watching on tv. There was the usual blood and thunder these occasions bring out but there was thud and blunder too, with all of the goals down to defensive lapses or individual error. Celtic found Rangers getting in their faces, especially in that first half, and not letting them build the play or find their rhythm. It’s to the Hoops’ credit that despite playing well below their capacity, they matched a Rangers team playing as well as they have in this fixture for a considerable time. Much of the post-match analysis centered on the whether Rangers should have had a penalty and in truth, had it happened at the other end, I would be looking for one. Human error can into play though and the referee awarded a free kick on the edge of the box. Not an easy decision to make but subsequent audio recordings of the advice he received from the VAR team suggested they were all convinced the offence took place outside the box. Events since suggest they were in error but these happen as Motherwell found out too recently. Celtic experienced it recently as well when Daizen Maeda was bundled over in the box during a league match with Motherwell. The VAR review on YouTube is refreshingly honest and admits to the errors made during games. However, the decision at Hampden seems to have fed perfectly into the persecution complex which is developing among many Rangers fans. ‘We have been robbed in three cup finals in recent years!’ one said on social media. The 2019 League cup final, last season’s cup final and of course last week’s match. On closer inspection of his claims, we see that Chris Julien’s winner in the 2019 cup final was at best a marginal decision. This was before VAR and the officials had to trust their eyes as a free kick was sent into a crowded penalty area. He may have been off by a few centimeters but the speed of the action makes it very challenging for the officials to judge that and the goal stood. Far better looking at Alfredo Morelos missing sitter after sitter, including a penalty, than castigating the referee over a marginal call. In last season’s cup final, Tavernier’s corner was knocked over the line but as VAR demonstrated, Raskin clearly pushed Joe Hart in the back as he went for the cross. It was a clear foul and the ‘goal’ was correctly disallowed. The bleating from many followers of the Ibrox club was partly fed by Celtic eclipsing their trophy haul and demonstrating the ‘most successful club in the world’ claim for the risible nonsense it always was. All of football’s record trophy hauls are held by clubs in smaller countries where one or two clubs tend to dominate. Are we seriously saying that winning any amount of SPFL titles is comparable to Real Madrid winning 15 European Cups, 8 world club championships, 38 La Ligas and 2 UEFA Cups? Celtic won’t go down that road because they don’t need any puffed-up sense of importance to prop up an imaginary superiority complex. To be Scotland’s most successful club is enough for the club and fans without making any patently absurd claims. The fact that the new avatar of Rangers FC has seriously struggled to match a dominant Celtic over the past dozen years is a reminder that post liquidation, it will not be business as usual. Rangers are learning that living within your means and not spending money you don’t have is the new reality. Celtic is a well-run, profitable club which has built up a sustainable business over many years so that it now outperforms Rangers in any and every matrix. The foundations laid by Fergus McCann and the sustainable business model he preached have borne much fruit in the past 25 years. It is galling for supporters of a club which lorded it over Scottish football for most of the 1990s to realise that their greatest rivals have risen from their knees in the years since then and are set to eclipse every record they hold. The meltdown since last Sunday’s game isn’t just about a penalty decision, it is about the continuing collapse of the old order where they seemed unassailable in their position as the establishment club; as the ‘people.’ The earthquake which hit Ibrox in 2012, like the failure of the team in the years since then, is blamed on everybody else apart from themselves. The head of refereeing at the SFA, Willie Collum admitted in retrospect that Rangers should have has a penalty. It was human error of the same kind which denied decisions to other teams in the league in recent weeks. Mr Collum once game a penalty to Rangers when his back was to the play on the basis that he heard contact. It was in fact an outrageous dive by a Rangers player but Celtic fans were told that these things even themselves out over the course of the season. Celtic fans have endured a lot of poor calls in matches over the years, some of which affected the outcome of games. In the 1990s, some of these decisions fed a sense of injustice but in truth the team was underperforming and such decisions just compounded that fact. Rangers spoke of the non-award of the penalty of ‘bringing the game into disrepute.’ Yes, a club which has yet to show any remorse for the use of under the table payments to players in the EBT years, which had an unwritten policy of not employing Catholics for a lifetime, which had a stand closed by UEFA for racist chanting and whose followers filled the air at Hampden last weekend with bigoted chanting have the brass neck to say that a human error brought the game into disrepute. The referee in the match, Mr Beaton, a man who makes no secret of the fact that he is a Rangers supporter, once ignored Alfredo Morelos stamping on a Celtic player and later in the same game grabbing the private parts of another. That same evening, he was pictured in a Rangers bar, hardly a sensible thing to do for a referee. In those circumstances, it is hard for Rangers fans to allege he is biased against their team, so it’s the VAR team who are getting the flak and, some would argue, have been thrown under the bus by the SFA. Football is the most fluid and unpredictable game in the world and refereeing matches is a tough assignment. Officials have to deal with a high-speed sport in which some players actively try to con them. I think Mr Beaton had a poor game last Sunday, he failed to send of Jeftie for a horrendous stamp on Nikolas Kuhn’s ankle, he failed to allocate a second yellow card to Rangers’ defender Balogun who committed one or two nasty challenges after receiving his first card. He also made Callum McGregor retake a free kick after the Celtic skipper sent Daizen Maeda in on goal. These things happen in football and we’re told to get on with it. Those Rangers fans complaining today that they are subject to the same errors we all have to live with should reflect on the fact that they recently went an unprecedented 74 games without conceding a penalty in the SPFL. An astonishing fact given the nature of football. The Ibrox club has had more than its fair share of breaks over the years and are perhaps now finding that in the modern era they are having to accept that mistakes happen and they are not immune to them. All clubs have to accept that and we remain hopeful that better trained VAR officials will eliminate errors as far as possible in the future. Mistakes will still happen, that is human nature, but there should be no witch hunt of officials after them. The sense of entitlement which leads to this rage when Rangers get a poor call in a game reminds us of that old expression; the karma cafe is open to all, there are no menus, you are served what you deserve. Rangers deserve to be treated like all the other clubs in the league no matter how much that hurts.
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