Managers praise Willie Collum's 'honesty and transparency' amid VAR admissions

Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers has praised Willie Collum’s honesty and transparency after Scotland’s new head of referees admitted the champions should have had a penalty against Kilmarnock.

The Scottish Football Association’s referees chief, who stepped into the role after ending his career as a match official and education adviser this summer, explained some big decisions in a new monthly show on the SFA’s YouTube channel.

He reviewed the controversial incident at Celtic Park when Hoops striker Kyogo Furuhashi touched the ball past Robby McCrorie before being felled and admitted the Kilmarnock goalkeeper was reckless and that VAR should have intervened when referee Don Robertson played on.

Rodgers said: “I thought it was great. And at the time I spoke to Willie about that because I felt it was a penalty. He was very, very good, I have to say, he was very clear on his thoughts and he said that at the time.

“It has to be applauded – transparency is what we want. He is coming out and calling it as it is.

“He has just come off the field from refereeing, so he knows the temperature in there as an official and I think his experience will really help.

“I know he is trying to have an educational programme because there aren’t so many top referees up here and I say that in the nicest way just in terms of guys coming through.

“Guys like Willie who have experience will help those guys come through. It was open and honest. He can’t do that every single weekend, but he can certainly do it every month. It will help the referees to increase their standard.”

Collum also felt Dundee United were wrongly denied a penalty against Dundee and Tannadice boss Jim Goodwin said the review was a step forward.

“Obviously at the time we felt it was a penalty,”Goodwin said. “I felt that moment was kind of glossed over a little bit too quickly and the referee was never asked to the monitor.

“But I think Willie Collum is a great appointment in the position that he’s in now.

“We had a really positive meeting with Willie at Hampden, with the rest of the managers, and he explained the different kind of changes that he was wanting to make.

“And I think this openness and transparency is a real positive for the game. We can accept mistakes, we all make them as managers, as players and as referees and they tend to be honest mistakes.”

Motherwell manager Stuart Kettlewell has never hidden his frustration with VAR, but he has been impressed with the way it is working this season.

Kettlewell said: “I feel it has been really good to this point. I know there are still going to be one or two contentious issues, but the transparency has been excellent from day one, the conversations, the listening to each other.

“That was something I had spoken about for a long, long time. I certainly feel there is a little change in the tide in terms of getting more decisions right. It just feels like there has been a level of common sense.”

However, St Johnstone manager Craig Levein was not quite to enthusiastic about the review.

Levein faces an SFA disciplinary hearing after he claimed a review of Rangers striker Cyriel Dessers’ initially-disallowed goal against his side had been swept under the carpet.

“I haven’t watched it, no,” he said of Collum’s show. “And my opinion on the Rangers game still stands, that the whole thing was started by a foul from Dessers. I think they got it wrong and he should have been penalised for that foul.”