Keith Jackson hits out at Rangers in Daily Record after new Ibrox saga
Keith Jackson has hit out at the “ridiculous” Rangers protests over Willie Collum no longer being involved with their games in the SPFL after his decision in the Old Firm derby.
The Daily Record journalist, writing in the Monday Jury column (8 January, page 41) believes that the Gers were fighting the good fight over the Alistair Johnston incident until they played the Collum card taking a “flamethrower to their argument”.
Collum was on VAR duty in the Gers’ 2-1 defeat at Parkhead and decided there was no case to answer after stills were shown of Abdallah Sima offside in the build-up, which would have overturned any penalty decision anyway.
Rangers met with refs chief Crawford Allan and asked for the VAR audio to be released but then protested that Collum should be taken off their SPFL matches.
Jackson wrote: “Rangers were fighting the good fight on behalf of all of Scottish football until they played the Willie Collum cards and took a flamethrower to their argument. Questions should be asked of VAR but eye-popping paranoia renders them ridiculous.”
Needless
Questions certainly need to be asked of the use of VAR from officials all over the UK let alone Scotland and Rangers were indeed trying to fight a battle that every football club needed.
However, there was simply no need to request that Collum be removed from their games as it indeed threw a “flamethrower” to any justified protests they felt they had.
The statement put out by the club was a bit sketchy at best and could indeed have been seen as a ploy to deflect their disappointing Old Firm defeat to Celtic.
However, they were well within their right to question the use of VAR but not when it got too personal for them, that’s when developments got bordering-on ridiculous.
The SFA and Rangers don’t have the best histories together, so this argument was never going to end well with both sides defending themselves in continual statements.
An agreement will likely never be reached, and it may be time to move on now.
In other Rangers news, the club want to sign a player from the Eredivisie and his price may be cut by £5million.