First Farry, then Dallas, now Beaton. Today it’s the anti-Celtic Scottish FA v Rodgers 

Celtic throwing everything in Brendan’s defence, let’s hope it works…

Today is the day of reckoning for Brendan Rodgers as he goes in front of the beaks for comments he made after our controversial defeat at Tynecastle earlier this month.

Brendan of course criticised John Beaton who was on VAR duties over his baffling decision to send on-field referee Don Robertson to the pitch side monitor over an incident that no one claimed, not one player, not one supporter and more importantly the referee Don Robertson himself adjudged there to be no offence committed in real time.

That’s down to the fact that there was no offence committed. It was proven after the game that the decision was wrong. It was universally agreed by every single pundit and refereeing expert afterwards. Even the Hearts players and manager admitted their surprise at the award. In fact it went against the rules of the game, rules that Beaton should know as it’s his job.

Beaton had already influenced the outcome of the game by getting Robertson to re-visit his yellow card given to Yang for a high boot,  a decision everyone reckons was correct, except Beaton who wanted a red card for that challenge which Kenny Dalglish pointed out was an indirect free-kick in his day. Robertson was too weak and submissive to show any balls and disgracefully the Scottish FA have given him the Livingston v Celtic game this weekend.

Willie Collum after his VAR controversies in the Glasgow Derby on 30 December has still not refereed a game in the Scottish Premiership involving theRangers after their attack on that VAR official. Clement’s summons to the SFA to answer charges on his comments at the New Year must have got lost in the post.

Brendan’s ‘crime’ was to call out Beaton as incompetent. Yes, incompetent means many things, including lacking the skills to do your job properly, and it was unanimously agreed that Beaton got it all disastrously wrong that day, thus falling to do his job properly. So why the need to take Brendan to task for simply stating the truth?

Incompetence is the opposite of excellence, where would any reasonable person position Beaton’s performance on VAR on that scale? If it was an exam on his VAR skills he’d fail badly but this is the Scottish FA with their own dark, shady and shamefully sectarian past reaching at times all the way up their their top officials (Google Jim Farry and Hugh Dallas younger readers).

Celtic’s intent is clear The club have hired the UK’s top sports barrister Nick De Marco to defend Brendan in the hope of getting his name cleared and escaping a touchline ban as part of any punishment. The club are clearly backing the manager and throwing everything in their bid to clear his name. Let’s hope it’s not in vain.

If Brendan does get the two match ban then the club and the Celtic support must respond. This must be a line in the sand moment for VAR otherwise we are issuing a licence to be cheated.