“WTF Is That VAR Decision? No Club Will Ever Respect SFA Again” — Reflecting on the Growing Frustration With Scottish VAR

“WTF Is That VAR Decision? No Club Will Ever Respect SFA Again” — Reflecting on the Growing Frustration With Scottish VAR

The headline captures the kind of anger that can explode after a controversial football decision, particularly when a team believes technology that was introduced to improve fairness has instead contributed to an injustice.

However, it is important to distinguish the dramatic claim in the headline from the verified events. Rangers defeated St Mirren 5–1 at Ibrox on 16 August 2026 in the Premier Sports Cup, with St Mirren also missing a late penalty after the initial attempt was disallowed and the retake subsequently saved. There is no reliable evidence in the sources available to me confirming that St Mirren’s coach actually used the quoted words above.

Even so, the wider issue raised by the headline is a genuine and important one: how much trust should clubs and supporters place in VAR when controversial decisions continue to dominate Scottish football?

VAR was introduced with the intention of reducing obvious refereeing mistakes.

In theory, that should have made football fairer.

A referee can miss an incident because of positioning, speed or the number of players around the ball, but VAR provides another opportunity to examine what happened.

The problem is that technology does not eliminate controversy.

Instead, it can sometimes move the argument from the referee to the people operating the technology.

That is why managers and coaches can become particularly frustrated when they believe a decision was clearly wrong despite the availability of multiple television angles.

For a team like St Mirren, these moments can feel especially significant because Scottish football is extremely competitive.

A single penalty, red card or disallowed goal can change the entire direction of a match.

It can influence momentum, confidence and ultimately the result.

The frustration becomes even greater when supporters watch the replay and believe they can see something different from what the officials have concluded.

That creates a dangerous gap between what fans believe they are seeing and what the authorities believe happened.

Scottish football has experienced several high-profile VAR controversies in recent seasons.

The SFA has acknowledged errors through its review processes, while the introduction of regular VAR reviews has attempted to provide greater transparency around contentious incidents.

That transparency is important because supporters do not simply want decisions to be made.

They want to understand why those decisions were made.

If a referee makes an incorrect decision, explaining the reasoning behind it does not necessarily make the mistake disappear.

But it can help supporters understand the process and establish whether the correct protocol was followed.

The alternative is silence.

And silence is often what creates the biggest suspicion.

When clubs feel that they cannot receive clear explanations after major decisions, frustration naturally grows.

That does not mean every controversial decision represents bias or corruption.

Football is an extremely subjective sport, and even experienced officials can interpret the same incident differently.

The challenge for the SFA is therefore not to convince everybody that every decision will be correct.

That is impossible.

The challenge is to demonstrate that the system is consistent, transparent and accountable.

This is particularly important because Scottish football already has a complicated relationship with refereeing controversies.

Earlier this year, an SFA Key Match Incident review concluded that Rangers should have been awarded a penalty against St Mirren for an Alex Gogic handball.

That example demonstrates why these arguments rarely disappear after the final whistle.

A decision can be reviewed weeks or months later, and an independent assessment can determine that the officials got something wrong.

But by then, the match has already been played.

The points have already been won or lost.

The emotional consequences have already affected players and supporters.

That is why VAR cannot simply be judged by how many mistakes it corrects.

It must also be judged by how efficiently it handles difficult incidents and communicates its reasoning.

There is another important dimension to this debate.

Managers and coaches should certainly be allowed to question decisions, but there must also be boundaries.

The SFA has demonstrated that criticism of match officials can lead to disciplinary action. Rangers manager Derek McInnes, for example, received a four-match suspension following comments about refereeing decisions made while he was Hearts manager.

That creates a difficult balance.

Officials need protection from personal abuse and intimidation.

At the same time, managers and clubs must be able to challenge decisions without feeling that legitimate criticism will automatically result in punishment.

The solution should be stronger communication rather than greater hostility.

If a controversial VAR decision occurs, the football authorities should explain the relevant law, identify what the VAR saw and clarify why the referee was or was not advised to review the incident.

That would not satisfy everyone.

But it would create accountability.

For supporters, transparency is ultimately about trust.

They may accept an incorrect decision if they believe the officials genuinely followed the correct process.

What they struggle to accept is the feeling that nobody is willing to explain what happened.

The St Mirren-Rangers match itself ultimately ended decisively, with Rangers winning 5–1 and progressing to the quarter-finals. That means any individual refereeing controversy should not be allowed to obscure the football itself.

Yet the broader VAR debate remains.

Scottish football needs officials, technology and clubs to work together rather than becoming permanent opponents.

VAR should not become another source of division between clubs and the SFA.

It should be a tool for improving the game.

If the authorities can provide clearer explanations, stronger consistency and greater transparency, trust can gradually return.

Until then, every controversial decision will continue to produce the same question from supporters across Scotland:

**If VAR is supposed to make football fairer, why does it so often leave everyone arguing about whether the decision was fair in the first place?**