Rangers have created a lot of their own problems this season with Philippe Clement far from blameless himself too.
Aside from injuries to the squad and the manager struggling to settle on a game plan away from Ibrox, there has been another issue too.
Despite the technology being available, Rangers have been the victim of several bizarre incidents involving VAR and referees.
Nick Walsh hammered by fellow referees after Rangers red card
The most painful has been not awarding Rangers a penalty in the Premier Sports Cup final with the scores tied and not long left to play, however, that is only one in a series of questionable decisions.
The latest, by Nick Walsh, has been slammed by former colleagues from the refereeing fraternity of Steve Conroy and Des Roache via The Ref’s View podcast, posting on X.
Referring to the SFA’s video and audio release from Mohamed Diomande’s red card against Dundee United, they said:
“The VAR team are very articulate here, the referee doesn’t get out of his own way and Walsh comes across horrendous with this audio.
“For us, Nick was given every opportunity to rectify the situation with clear advice given. He was thrown a lifeline that should’ve placed a seed of doubt in his mind over this incident. His own mind was already made up – wrongly! He dug his own grave there for himself.”
The subtitles on the video make things even worse for Walsh.
The VAR and assistant VAR both agree and use the specific wording for a red card, seeing nothing “violent and no brutality”, they also describe the force as “negligible”.
In short, every buzz word for it not to be a red card.
Walsh checks if this is they opinion, they confirm, but then Walsh sticks with his original decision anyway because “I see a slap towards the face and I’m going to put him off”, ignoring the clearer angle and the build up to the incident.
Is Willie Collum’s position as head of referees untenable?
That the red card was rescinded and not even downgraded to a yellow card, says it all.
Collum suggested that, at worse, Diomande and Kevin Holt the Utd player, should both have been carded if the referee deemed action necessary.
This would have seen Holt see red instead. How he got away with pushing Diomande twice, for no reason, remains to be seen.
Collum said there would be improvements and accountability when he took over as the head of refereeing, so far, there has been very little of either as standards slump and mistakes get worse.
