Fair play to Willie Collum.
He might not have been everyone’s cup of tea when he was out there on the pitch as the man in the middle. But I have to put my hands up and admit he’s been a breath of fresh air since moving into the role as head of Scotland’s refs. And my admiration for him grew even further yesterday morning when he fronted up over that VAR howler, which very probably cost my old club Sunday’s League Cup Final.
He didn’t just admit his men inside Clydesdale House made a mistake by not awarding Rangers a penalty for the foul on Vaclav Cerny by Liam Scales. He went even further than that by calling it a “bad mistake” and branding it “unacceptable”. And you know what? As hard as that still is for me to accept, there is some comfort to be had from the fact Willie has come out in full public view and taken ownership of it. By doing that – and being brave enough to be so brutally honest – he has at least drawn a line under the whole episode.
Nothing has been swept under any carpets. There has been no attempt to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes. The whole world knew his officials had dropped a major clanger and I really respect him for making no attempt to deny it. The VAR officials had one job when they pulled up their seats in front of the screen on Sunday afternoon and messed it up. They were far too quick to assess that ref John Beaton was right only to award Rangers a free-kick on the edge of the box. They should have been focusing on where the pull on Cerny finished… which was inside Celtic’s penalty box.
And Willie has been big enough to accept that’s simply not good enough where his own officials are concerned. He’s taken full accountability and that is all anyone can reasonably ask of him. Openness, honesty and transparency. That’s what he promised when he took on the job in the summer and he has been as good as his word.
Does it make me feel any better about the fact the trophy ended up draped in green and white ribbons? No, not really. But I do feel that, by dealing with it in the manner he has, it allows everyone to move on. Which is exactly what Rangers need to do now the dust from Hampden has settled.
Mistakes happen. Bad decisions are not restricted to the officials on the pitch or in the VAR studio. The decisions made when Rangers were breaking through Celtic’s defence and four on one against Cameron Carter-Vickers, for example, may have been even more significant with regards to Sunday’s result.
It may not have had to go to extra-time if Rangers had taken advantage of that situation. If they had got themselves 2-0 in front, then who knows, they might have been able to see it out. But, again, these things happen. I know I made plenty of bad decisions at important moments in big games.
It’s part and parcel of being a football player – you get over it and you move on. So there’s no point now in dwelling any longer on how it all ended for Rangers five days ago, as sore as it was at the time.
All that matters is they pick themselves up and take the positives out of a performance that was a whole lot stronger and more resilient than most people probably expected. And, yes, I include myself in that. I was there in the main stand and I admit when Daizen Maeda scored Celtic’s second goal, I was worried they might go on to run away with it and end up as comfortable winners.
We’ve seen it happen so many times over the last couple of years. so I was really encouraged by the response that followed. Rangers dug deep and continued to fight. You can use words like grit, determination and resilience. In my book, we call it balls. You need a big pair of them if you’re going to wear that jersey in an Old Firm derby and that’s exactly what I saw from these players on Sunday.
They didn’t fold. They picked themselves back up off the floor, rolled up their sleeves and battled their way back into the match. Yes, ultimately, it will go down as another defeat against Celtic and there have been too many of them for my liking. But, let’s be honest, while some of these recent beatings have been no contests, this was the absolute opposite.
That shows me Philippe Clement has got something to work with in terms of where this team are going and there’s no doubt there have been some big improvements made over the last month or so. Guys like Nico Raskin, Ianis Hagi and Hamza Igamane have made a huge difference and Nedim Bajrami is starting to look like a £3million player now he’s being deployed in the No.10 role.
I really enjoyed the way he got his goal at the weekend as he wasn’t just happy to play Igamane in and then stand back admiring his own pass. He was on the move right away because he sniffed there might be the chance for a tap-in if Kasper Schmeichel spilled the shot – and that is exactly what happened.
Hagi looks like a new signing and has added real movement and variation to the way the team play in the final third. And Raskin – who was immense at the National Stadium – gets better and better with every game.
There are plenty of positives for Rangers to take into the festive period, so they have to recover quickly from the
disappointment of losing the Cup Final on penalties and forget all about the one that wasn’t given. All that matters is what comes next. And that has to be delivering nine points from their next three games before going head-to-head with Celtic again on January 2.