David Martindale's right, VAR is a disaster in Scotland... but it's the refs that need sorting, not the technology

More and more people appear to be taking the side of Livingston manager David Martindale and asking what’s the point of keeping VAR in Scottish football when the trained referees parked in front of TV monitors at Clydesdale House still can’t get things right.

Here’s the Catch-22, though. If we scrap it, you can bet your bottom dollar that officiating teams inside stadiums will definitely find a way to make unfathomable mistakes during key moments of games that wouldn’t be picked up and rectified at all.

Difficult as it is to make this argument sound convincing, the benefits of maintaining and improving the technology available still win out. Just.

The real solution, of course, is for SFA head of refereeing Willie Collum to get his staff up to speed, both in terms of working with video re-runs and the old-fashioned role of keeping a handle on what’s happening in real time in matches.

Because, let’s face it, this schtick of Collum appearing on his Sky Sports review show every month to do the big mea culpa on behalf of officials is starting to wear a bit thin.

‘I don’t think they understand what’s actually at stake and how much this means to managers and clubs,’ ventured Martindale after yesterday's events at Ibrox. ‘It’s just flippant. Oh, we got it wrong. Sorry. Move on to next week when there’s another three decisions that are wrong.’

Rangers’ hard-fought 2-1 win over Livi was a perfect example of where we are, really, and why so many folk are at their wits’ end with the grim standards on show.

You can’t trust Collum’s crack squadron with VAR. And you can’t trust them without it. A sorry old situation, indeed. And a difficult one to deal with.

Let’s take the incident that commandeered the headlines. It’s 1-1 in the 21st minute, with Tete Yengi having cancelled out an early opener from home defender Manny Fernandez. The ball comes in from the left, Stevie May knocks it on to Yengi and the big Aussie tries to dink it back across keeper Jack Butland into the far corner. Fernandez gets in the way, but the ball very clearly strikes the lower part of his left arm.

Now, there’s a spot of subjectivity involved. The BBC reported on their live feed that they had received guidance, presumably from the SFA, that no penalty was given because of ‘close proximity’ and ‘natural position of the arm’.

From Daily Mail Sport’s seat in the stand, it seemed pretty clear that Fernandez’s arm was hanging just a little too far away from his body for comfort and that he actually moved it towards the ball. As for the close-proximity argument, there was quite a bit of space between the defender and Yengi as he sent the ball goalwards.

There have been suggestions the ball might also have struck Fernandez’s thigh initially. There appears to be no evidence to back that up, though.

It should have been a penalty. And it’s hard to understand why VAR John Beaton didn’t intervene when referee Ross Hardie appeared to have missed it.

It all feeds into the snowballing argument that there are so many errors being made with the operation and implementation of the technology that there’s no point in having it any more.

Yet look at Rangers’ 78th-minute winner. Scrap VAR and that doesn’t get given. If it doesn’t get given, it’s a travesty. One that will send radio phone-ins and crackpots on messageboards into a frenzy for months.

Why main stand linesman Dougie Potter raised his flag for offside when James Tavernier knocked the ball forward in the build-up to Mohamed Diomande’s clincher is absolutely baffling.

Diomande was the furthest Rangers player forward and benefited from a knock-on from substitute Bojan Miovski, but the point is this: he was onside by an absolute country mile all the way through the passage of play.

It wasn’t even close. It wasn’t one of those split-second calls where you could understand the officials making a misjudgment. It wasn’t even up for discussion.

Without Beaton getting involved from the VAR room, though, it wouldn’t have counted. An unforgivable howler of a mistake would have cost Rangers the points.

It’s depressing, really. We’ve seen enough over the past couple of years to have no confidence in VAR working properly because of the people at the controls, but what’s the alternative? Going back to putting the whole kit and caboodle back in the hands of the officials sent out there by the SFA, who simply can’t be trusted to get big calls right?

Diomande got his goal in the end. Whether Rangers deserved a fourth league win on the spin under new head coach Danny Rohl is another thing entirely.

Amid a flat atmosphere at Ibrox, they were dismal. Nasser Djiga and Fernandez were particularly awful in conceding to Yengi, being caught out by a long ball from May.

Unlike Russell Martin, at least Rohl is smart enough to have neither of them operating under orders to try and pass the ball around like Xavi and Iniesta.

However, the two defenders, forming a centre-back pairing because of injuries to John Souttar and Derek Cornelius, are a disaster waiting to happen.

Oliver Antman was terrible. Same goes for fellow summer arrival Thelo Aasgaard. These guys cost big money and are now coming under real pressure to show they are not out of their depth.

What was most concerning for Rangers was the lack of invention in the final third. Even Djeidi Gassama looks to be getting worn down by it all. The absence of any real intent or drive was evident, too.

This was supposed to be Tavernier’s season for being put out to pasture. It says something that, at the ripe old age of 34, he still looks like he’s got more fire in the belly than anyone.

You can’t blame Rohl for the evident lack of quality. He just has to get on with things until the January window comes around and he can spend some dough on the kind of players he wants.

If only Collum could wave a chequebook and get some high-end performers into his team. As it is, more questions are going to be asked over what kind of job he is actually doing, and whether a new approach on training and developing referees might be something to consider.