‘What troubled me’ – Serious questions raised about VAR in James Forrest’s Celtic ‘penalty’ vs St Johnstone

It seems that James Forrest’s disallowed penalty in Celtic’s Scottish Cup win over St Johnstone is causing all sorts of debate.

In the end, the non-penalty didn’t have any bearing on the result as Celtic still ran out comfortable winners, however, it has raised big concerns over how VAR is still being used in our game.

James Forrest was blatantly had a forearm shoved into his face from a St Johnstone defender and it was clear for the video referee to see.

However, it appears now that what the referee was shown might have been the wrong footage which has led to the whistler being told what to do on-field by the VAR operatives at Hampden.

The ‘two incidents’ in James Forrest’s penalty row vs St Johnstone

There were two parts to the incident the referee had to look at and here, Sean from ACSOM explains how he was left ‘troubled’ at what the referee was shown.

Sean told A Celtic State of Mind, “I actually thought, honestly, my first two viewings, I thought it was. But then when you actually, so because there’s two incidents, right, there’s the slide tackle. So my first feeling was he’s put off, he’s been impeded by the slide tackle.

“But then when you watch it from the reverse angle, he’s actually taken it in his stride and he’s not been impeded. So then when you watch it from that same angle that shows you the slide tackle hasn’t impeded him.

Penalty Drama for Celtic 🖥️

Forrest tried to explore through St Johnstone defenders and was awarded a penalty, but it was eventually taken away ❌#ScottishCup is LIVE on Paramount+ 🍿 pic.twitter.com/ok6zCAwPdX

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“It looks like the defenders come across and hip check them. So from now I’m thinking, okay, if it’s not the first one, it’s the second one.

“But then if you change the camera angle again, the defenders are just coming across and Forrest, if anything, has ran into him when you see it from a different camera angle.”

VAR showed referee the wrong ‘angle’ of James Forrest’s penalty incident

Sean continued, “But what confused me was the angle that the referee was watching on the VAR monitor because it was the one that looks like the hip check. So what troubled me about it was that referee seemed to be overturning it on a camera angle that looked like a foul.

“To me that says he’s just listened to what’s in his earpiece. Because there was a camera angle that made it look like the one you’re talking about, the second player, hasn’t committed a foul. There was a camera angle that does look like that. It looks like it’s just Forrest running into him.

“But that wasn’t what they showed the ref. So that’s what’s troubling to me more than anything. I didn’t think it was a penalty. Based on the combined camera angles, I thought it wasn’t a penalty. But I’m not sure how the referee got to that from viewing that angle on the monitor.”

So it seems that even more questions are being raised by fans and pundits as the Scottish Cup reaction now starts to die down.

Hopefully, there will be none of this nonsense when Celtic face Aberdeen in May and fans are talking about football and not VAR or match officials.

I won’t hold my breath.