Rangers suffer VAR giveth and taketh away as top referee raises fears over 2 unsound convictions at Ibrox

Former referee Des Roache reckons the use of still images by VAR helped and hindered Rangers in their action-packed 3-1 win over Dundee on Saturday.

The former grade one official shared his sympathies with the Dark Blues over the call from Kevin Clancy to award a penalty after being flagged by his video assistant to alert him to tussling between Aaron Donnelly and Abdallah Sima in the box. But he believes Jose Cifuentes was hard done to after he was sent off before the break and reckons the slowed down footage of the midfielder's tackle on Amadou Bakayoko did the player no favours.

And now Roache – speaking to Ellisimo – said: "I don’t think Kevin missed it, not one player was looking for a penalty. It was only when he saw a still image of the situation that he was forced into making the decision, which is what Tony Docherty said after the game. Tony said that Sima was pulling Aaron Donnelly's shirt too but that doesn’t seem to have been in the pictures that Kevin Clancy saw.

“Again, stills can paint a horrible picture and that’s what happened with the Jose Cifuentes challenge on Amadou Bakayoko. I don’t think for a minute that he was trying to stamp on him and I was quite happy with the yellow card. But when it’s slowed down and then stopped it looks so bad and Kevin has to change the card to a red.

“We see it in Europe, too, with the Daizen Maeda red card in Madrid. In normal time it looks like a yellow card but when it’s slowed down it looks so much worse.”