22 minutes ago
It’s not often that you leave Tynecastle after taking on either side of the Old Firm and feel a little heavy when you get away with nothing.
The truth is that many previous Hearts managers showed Celtic and Rangers too much respect, fielding sides with a ‘safety first’ mentality and frustrating our attacking intentions to contain our visitors.
I have to commend interim boss Steven Naismith for worrying Celtic more than they expected on their own coronation weekend as he played an attacking system and brought the game to the champions-elect.
We targeted attacks and tried to take advantage of their defenses, which contained a huge Cameron Carter-Vickers shaped hole. Josh Ginnelly, Yutaro Oda and Lawrence Shankland pushed their defensive line high into their own half and let us play with a degree of comfort for most of the first 45 minutes, something we’re not used to in this type of clash.
Unfortunately, the game ended as a contest when Willie Collum motioned referee Nick Walsh to the VAR screen to review Alex Cochrane’s encounter with Daizen Maeda. Once a referee goes to the monitor, every supporter knows they will take their “advice” and change their decision, which in this case meant Cochrane received the red card and Hearts were down to 10 men for over 45 minutes.
I take off my maroon tinted glasses for a second and put aside whether it’s a warning or a sending off – which, by the way, it’s not – we should certainly be concerned about how often VAR officials get into games with ‘clear.’ “ are intricate and obvious errors”.
To me, Collum’s opinion is secondary to Nick Walsh, who is on the field at the time of the incident and has a better vantage point. The fact that no Celtic player has objected to Walsh after first booking with Cochrane is telling. There was no gross error in prudence, and it’s a mystery to me why Collum had to interfere.
It really is the worst referee I’ve seen at Tynecastle, alongside the infamous nosedive of Sotirios Kyrgiakos in 2005 when Rangers were fighting for the title and were awarded a late penalty that saw Saulius Mikoliunas sent off for failing to score linesman who claimed to have seen a shove from Lee Miller.
But 18 years later and despite the added ‘advantage’ of VAR, fans’ head scratching and confusion over refereeing decisions – not just in this game – lingers.
As I said last week we need perfect results to get third place and we now rely on others to do us a favor and take points from Aberdeen.
How fitting it would be if our dear neighbors Hibs headed to Pittodrie this weekend and sourced something to help us in our quest to win back the European group stage bounty of over £4million. I never wanted Lee Johnson’s men to “Hibs it” any less.
Comments are closed.