I’m not going to pretend Rangers haven’t benefited from decisions over the years. Every club has. But it’s hard to take the “officials are pro Rangers” line seriously when you’re watching the same sort of incident play out again and again and the outcome never seems to match the obviousness of what’s on the screen.

The specific frustration here is simple: a tackle that looked like a red card in real time somehow only got a yellow, and then VAR had the chance to step in and didn’t. That’s the bit that gets supporters riled. Mistakes happen at full speed. VAR exists to correct the big ones. When it doesn’t, it doesn’t just feel like an error. It feels like someone’s bottled the decision.

The “Rangers get everything” myth doesn’t fit reality

You hear it constantly in Scottish football. Rangers get the breaks. Rangers get the penalties. Rangers get the soft calls. And yet supporters can point to long spells where opponents don’t seem to see red cards against us, even when there are incidents that you’d expect to be checked properly.

This is where the anger comes from. Not because fans want a man sent off for the sake of it, but because consistency is supposed to be the one thing VAR improves. If a similar challenge is a red one week but a yellow the next, then what exactly are players meant to learn? What’s the threshold? And why does it always feel like Rangers need something absolutely undeniable before action is taken?

VAR’s biggest problem is confidence

In Scotland, VAR’s often sold as a safety net. In practice, it can feel like a shield for inaction. There’s a sense that officials are reluctant to overturn a decision unless it’s so clear nobody can argue, and that defeats the purpose. Football is messy. Most key decisions sit somewhere between “stonewall” and “never a foul”. If VAR won’t touch anything in that grey area, then it’s not doing much more than drawing lines for offsides.

And once supporters think VAR is timid, everything else gets viewed through that lens. Every non-decision feels deliberate. Every missed incident becomes part of a wider pattern.

Pressure, noise, and the Scottish football bubble

There’s also a broader point about how pressure works in this country. The noise around big clubs is relentless, and the conversation never really stops. Players react, managers react, pundits react, headlines react. Over time, you can see why fans believe that constant pressure shapes what referees are willing to do, especially in the moments that require real bravery: a second yellow, a straight red, a penalty against the home side.

That’s why the only real answer is transparency and consistency. Show the standards, apply them evenly, and explain the big calls properly. Otherwise, the suspicion just grows, and Scottish football ends up arguing about officials more than the actual football.

Written by Robbielogan72: 11 January 2026

Tags: tactics