Chris Sutton reacts as ‘bemused’ Rangers to demand answers from SFA over Celtic controversy
Chris Sutton reacted sarcastically to the news that Rangers were to “demand VAR answers” from the SFA over their disallowed goal against Celtic.
The Sky Sports pundit responded on his personal Twitter account Monday (4 September) to a Daily Record story about the Light Blues being “bemused” that a VAR review had seem Kemar Roofe’s opener ruled out for a supposed foul by Cyriel Dessers on Gustaf Lagerbielke.
The ex-Hoops striker posted “surprise surprise…” to the development, after the 1-0 Celtic win at Ibrox on Sunday that has left Michael Beale under pressure.
Video assistant Alan Muir had advised on-pitch referee Don Robertson to consult the pitch-side monitor, with the referee subsequently ruling the strike out, before Kyogo Furuhashi went on to score the winner again in first-half stoppage time.
Turning point?
Two things can be true at once, and in this instance those things can be that Beale’s Light Blues side were again not up to a good enough standard in a Glasgow derby, and again Rangers were on the wrong end of a crucial decision.
It won’t detract from Gers fans’ frustrations at their own manager but the decision to rule out another goal for the softest of apparent fouls had a significant influence on the match.
We will never know whether Rangers would have improved with the confidence boost of a lead and turned it into an important win, because that lead quickly disappeared.
Perhaps Dessers’ key role in creating the opener in his first Old Firm would have been what he needed to get his sputtering Ibrox career up and running properly, but instead it’s more bad luck for the under-fire summer signing.
Instead, just as with Alfredo Morelos’ opener in the 3-2 April defeat which effectively ended the title race last season [Sky Sports] Celtic got the benefit of a very charitable decision.
Rangers will probably get nowhere with the authorities but they might as well raise the point, and Sutton may be scoffing at the idea but his old side would be equally up in arms if the roles had been reversed, as they were for some time when Connor Goldson wasn’t penalised for a handball in January [Scottish Sun].
It would of course be nice if refereeing decisions weren’t the central point of so many heated derby outcomes, but that seems to be the way so often, and here we duly are again.
In other Rangers news, anything the club looked to do on deadline day hinged on one man who wasn’t on board.