What Scottish FA chief Ian Maxwell said about VAR as he defends technology and talks 'teething issues'

Scottish FA chief executive Ian Maxwell has defended VAR and its impact on the Scottish Premiership – but did admit there have been “teething problems”.

The intervention of the technology once again came in for criticism at the weekend with Ross County boss Malky Mackay left bemused by the penalty awarded to Celtic during their 2-0 win in Dingwall on Sunday. He said: “I’ve looked at the penalty about half a dozen times and I cannot believe that’s where the bar is set with VAR right now”.

The Staggies boss is far from the only manager who has criticised its involvement but Maxwell is hopeful issues will be smoothed out.

“The technology is working, there’s no doubt about that,” he told STV. “Refereeing has always been controversial. There is always subjectivity around decisions and that’s continuing.

“We’re not saying it has been perfect to date, and we’re obviously working as hard as we can to try and improve that. I think it’s worth recognising that we’re only five or six months into VAR and there are countries that have had it a lot longer than us that are still seeing issues. We want it to be as smooth and straightforward as possible and we’re working hard as we can to achieve that.”

He added: “We want decisions to be right. The reason for implementing VAR was to increase the number of decisions that we’re making on the pitch.

“There obviously have been teething problems but that’s part of implementation and part of a bedding-in process. We want to ensure that as many decisions are being made on the pitch as we can.”