Celtic and VAR have not had a good relationship this season. And who would have thought that Liverpool’s win over Tottenham would have opened old wounds for the Parkhead club yesterday?
The refereeing technology has made some huge calls in some of Celtic’s biggest games with the most recent being the one to award Fabio Silva a penalty after previously being booked by John Beaton for diving.
VAR intervened and rescinded the booking to award a spot kick and Rangers got a new lease of life after looking down and out at 2-0 down in Ibrox.
Celtic also fell foul to VAR at Tynecastle back in March where Hyunjun Yang was ordered off for a high boot and Tomoki Iwata’s handball gifted the Tynecastle club a penalty.
And it was Yang’s ordering off that Chris Sutton brought up yesterday after the former Celtic hero took in Liverpool’s win over Tottenham yesterday.
Chris Sutton’s fresh swipe at the SFA over Celtic controversy
Liverpool’s Joe Gomez challenged Spurs’ Brennan Johnson with an identical challenge to Yang’s high boot against Alex Cochrane at Tynecastle.
No action was taken against the Anfield midfielder and Sutton took to X to make his feelings clear on that decision by match referee, Paul Tierney.
The Yang red card has split opinion amongst pundits and former players but there is no doubt that Cochrane’s reaction after the challenge showed that it wasn’t as bad as it was made out to be.
The fallout after that game meant that Brendan Rodgers was sanctioned by the SFA for his comments about VAR.
It also meant that VAR heavily influenced a result of one Celtic’s games whilst in the midst of a title battle and whilst we don’t quite know yet if that will affect the outcome of the league, there is no doubt that had common sense prevailed at Tynecastle back in March, Hearts’ win over Celtic would not have been as easy as it was.