St Johnstone were at the centre of a VAR storm at McDiarmid Park on Wednesday night.
Courier Sport looks back on the 1-1 draw with Aberdeen and the two big refereeing talking points within it, the performance that suggested Saints might just be back on track and the departure of a high profile summer signing.
Fans have had enough
The Scottish Premiership is in a bad, bad place.
And I don’t think the SFA and SPFL fully appreciate the scale of the disenchantment and fury that is building up amongst supporters about how drastically VAR has altered the landscape.
You could make a strong case that its introduction, and/or the way in which Scottish officials are operating the new technology at their disposal, has been the most impactive change to top flight football in this country in living memory.
Maybe the back-pass rule tops it but (sorry, Andy Rhodes) that was for the better.
Wednesday night was, for many St Johnstone fans, their tipping point.
Refreshing that both sets of fans calling out the application of VAR last night. Supporters need to be a unified voice in expressing their dissatisfaction, as opposed to the tribalism that can see an attempted defence of decisions that go in your favour. VAR is crap, full stop.
— St Johnstone 1884 (@stjohnstone1884) January 25, 2024
Basically, we’ve reached a stage where one of the country’s top referees has had a perfect, unimpeded view of two passages of play and (correctly) deemed that Saints scored a perfectly good goal and that there wasn’t enough in a challenge by one of their defenders to merit the award of a penalty at the other end.
Those incidents, and the game, was effectively re-refereed.
‘Come along to our stadium to watch a match, during which a man in Glasgow will pore over footage to see if he can find a reason to deny you your enjoyment of celebrating a goal and you won’t have a clue what’s going on while he’s doing it.’
As a sales pitch, it needs some work.
VAR is turning paying customers away from football.
That message needs to sink in. And fast.
Good signs
St Johnstone’s resurgence under Alex Cleland and then Craig Levein has been built on getting into a lead and keeping it.
Of the 15 points accumulated post-Steven MacLean, none of those had been ‘comeback’ ones.
Wednesday night’s 16th was the first of that type.
That it was earned in such emotionally challenging circumstances made the draw all the more impressive.
Resilience and a refusal to accept the fates are conspiring against you are traits of a team that can hope and expect to move up the table.
Another source of encouragement was the emergence of an in-game ability to realise that their opponent was vulnerable and not as good as the individual talent of the 11 players would suggest it should be.
There was a bit too much respect shown in the first half but it was Saints who raised the tempo after the break, not Aberdeen.
And after they restored parity, they didn’t settle for their point.
This was a very important match in terms of performance and result.
After Airdrie – and, to a lesser extent, after Livingston and Kilmarnock – Saints needed to show that old habits weren’t taking root.
Levein will recognise his team again.
Goalless and back down the road
There’s no spin that can be put on Luke Jephcott’s short St Johnstone career.
It has been a huge disappointment.
Being without a club between seasons was mitigation during the League Cup group stage and the first few weeks of the Premiership campaign but that has long since faded into irrelevance.
Just look at the energy David Keltjens brought to the Saints team on Wednesday night.
Not only is he older than Jephcott, he was without a club and game-time for far longer.
Above all other signings, MacLean needed this one to come good.
Jephcott’s age and his pedigree make it all the more frustrating that he neither scored a goal as a Saints player, nor ever really came close to doing so.
He’ll probably now grab the winner for Newport County against Manchester United on Sunday but Levein had no other sensible option than to shake hands and invest the money freed up on a player better suited to the Premiership.
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