VAR in Scotland: Premiership clubs aim to have technology in by end of 2022

Head of referees Crawford Allan has revealed that the aim is to have the technology in place by the time the 2022/23 season restarts after the World Cup in Qatar, which ends on December 18, 2022.

The 42 SPFL clubs will vote on the implementation of VAR in February next year, with widespread support for it anticipated. Should it be approved, it can take up to 12 months to get the system up and running. Rangers manager Giovanni van Bronckhorst and Dundee United boss Tam Courts publicly backed it earlier this week on the back of Kyogo Furuhashi’s controversial goal for Celtic against Hearts on Thursday.

"Our desire is to bring it in as early as we can," said Scottish FA head of referee operations Crawford Allan.

"There's not one referee that I've spoken to that doesn't want it. We're doing what we can in the background to try to speed it along. It's going to take a while."

Scottish clubs in the top flight are expected to bear the brunt of costs for the technology, with is estimated at £60-80,000 per season. The Scottish Football Association has offered to pay for training for match officials.

"VAR's there to fix clear and obvious errors", Allan continued when speaking on BBC’s Radio Sportsound show: "You're not trying to prove a decision was correct, you're trying to say, 'was the decision clearly wrong?'

"VAR will be there to help with the big decisions, the factual ones and the ones that are clearly wrong."