Beaton wows ex-FIFA official after 'outstanding' reaction to Hagi incident v Hearts

Refereeing Consultant AUTHORITY Former FIFA Referee; Head of PGMOL (Professional Game Match Officials Limited). Focus: Laws of the Game, VAR implementation, officiating performance, and PGMOL policy. THE AUDIT Keith utilises Statscore’s Officiating Telemetry, including Deep-Data Metrics like Incident Accuracy Rates, VAR Intervention Latency, and Official Positional Efficiency. He provides technical refereeing analysis to reveal the regulatory reality behind match-defining decisions.

Published on:

16 Feb 2025, 2:40 pm

John Beaton won the plaudits for his game management as Rangers beat Hearts 3-1 at Tynecastle in the Scottish Premiership on Sunday.

Philippe Clement managed to relieve some of the pressure on him at Rangers by earning three points in the scrappiest of manners in the capital.

Jamie McCart scored two own-goals on either side of Vaclav Cerny's strike but the home fans felt as though they should have had a penalty earlier on go ahead when the game was goalless.

Rangers attacker Ianis Hagi was at the centre of a controversial incident v Hearts. (Credit: Imago)

Ianis Hagi booked correctly in Rangers win v Hearts - Keith Hackett

In the 17th minute, a Blair Spittal pass across the box appeared to hit Mohamed Diomande's hand after the ball bounced up off his feet.

However, before that, James Wilson was left on the deck following a hard challenge by Ianis Hagi.

Beaton allowed Hearts to play advantage and after the ball had entered a neutral area of the field, he halted play and dished out a yellow card to the Romanian.

Former Premier League and FIFA-listed referee Keith Hackett was delighted with Beaton's officiating and also thinks the whistler was right to not award a penalty for the Diomande handball.

"It was an outstanding piece of officiating to apply an advantage and then go back and correctly going back and cautioning," Hackett told Ibrox News.

"It was not a handball for me.

"Well done the referee."

Ianis Hagi is booked for this foul on James Wilson. (Credit: Sky Sports)

Beaton impresses as Rangers return to winning ways

It's good to sit and report that a referee did well in a Rangers game.

There were several incidents in the game that Beaton seemed to get spot on, including one that involved Clinton Nsiala pushing Wilson over in the build-up to Cerny's goal.

While Nsiala did make contact with the Hearts forward, there definitely wasn't sufficient contact to bring play back and award the home side with a penalty kick.

Rangers' win over Hearts was a hard-fought one, in which Neil Critchley's side were arguably the better team.

And while that win won't completely extinguish speculation about Clement's future, it will have no doubt bought him a week or two extra when it comes to the Light Blues inevitably getting rid of the unpopular Belgian.

Rangers

Hearts

Ianis Hagi

Scottish Premiership