The SFA will admit Rangers SHOULD have been awarded a penalty when they publicly review the performance of VAR this Friday, according to a report.
Celtic won the Premier Sports Cup final on penalties after a thrilling 3-3 draw at the national stadium but, as usual when these two sides meet, the days since have been dominated by the fallout over key decisions. New Ibrox CEO Patrick Stewart, who only started in the job on Monday, got straight down to business by contacting the SFA to demand clarity over why they weren’t awarded a spot-kick late in normal time, when Vaclav Cerny went down in the box after an apparent pull by Liam Scales.
John Beaton saw nothing wrong at the time and the VAR team of Alan Muir and Frank Connor elected not to call the on-field whistler over for a pitchside review. But Record Sport exclusively revealed yesterday that the under-fire VAR team have paid the price and been axed from this weekend’s matches, while Beaton and the rest of the officials have been assigned games.
Now the Scottish Sun are reporting that Hampden chiefs are set to go one further and front up to the mistake. They are yet to address it publicly, but it’s claimed the decision will be reviewed by the SFA’s Key Match Incident panel on Thursday, and will announce when that is released on Friday that Rangers should have had a spot-kick. It’s also expected to be addressed by head of refereeing Willie Collum in his next VAR review on YouTube.
Ibrox CEO Stewart spoke about the incident for the first time on Tuesday and said he’s still waiting on a response from decision-makers after writing to them on Monday. He said: Stewart said: “The manner in which we lost was hard to take. I have spoken with the SFA to ask for an explanation about the non-awarding of a penalty in extra-time. So I will wait to hear what the SFA have to say about that.”