Alistair Johnston just exposed the glaring flaw in SPFL refereeing

Saying the quiet part out loud

You almost never hear a professional footballer admit they got away with one. You certainly never hear it in the chaotic, bitterly divided aftermath of an Old Firm derby. The unwritten rule of post-match media in Glasgow is simple: deny everything, claim your team was the actual victim, and deflect any probing questions about refereeing decisions with a deadpan stare.

Alistair Johnston decided to throw that established playbook out the window.

By openly admitting he was lucky to avoid a red card against Rangers, the Celtic right-back did something entirely unexpected in the Scottish Premiership. He told the unvarnished truth. In a fixture defined by intense tribalism, where every throw-in is aggressively contested and every tackle is subjected to frame-by-frame analysis by thousands of armchair officials, his honesty is both refreshing and deeply revealing.

But more importantly, it serves as a glaring indictment of the current state of officiating in Scotland. If the player committing the foul knows instantly that it was a sending-off offense, how on earth did the officials in charge fail to reach the same conclusion?

The anatomy of an Old Firm challenge

To understand exactly why Johnston’s public admission matters, you have to look closely at how these specific games are refereed. The Old Firm operates under an entirely different set of physical laws. Challenges that would result in an immediate, unquestioned dismissal against St Mirren or Ross County are frequently waved on in the name of "letting the boys play."

Referees step onto the pitch at Celtic Park or Ibrox terrified of making the decision that fundamentally ruins the spectacle. That persistent hesitation creates a dangerous, poorly defined gray area. Officials desperately avoid becoming the front-page story, so they deliberately lower the bar for physical contact. They let early, aggressive fouls go unpunished. They issue stern verbal warnings when yellow cards are clearly required.

The players on the pitch know this perfectly well. The smart ones exploit it mercilessly. Johnston has built a formidable reputation at Celtic as a fiercely aggressive, no-nonsense defender. He reads the game well, but his primary asset in these massive derbies is his complete willingness to impose himself physically from the very first whistle.

He knows exactly where the disciplinary line is drawn, and he dances right on the extreme edge of it. But dancing on the line eventually leads to crossing it. When you commit to a challenge with high intensity in slick conditions, the margin for error evaporates entirely. One slight miscalculation, and your studs are suddenly planted in an opponent's ankle rather than the ball.

The European disconnect

To put Johnston’s challenge into the proper context, you only have to look at how identical tackles are treated when Scottish clubs play in UEFA competitions. When Celtic or Rangers step into the Champions League or Europa League, the physical leniency they enjoy domestically vanishes instantly.

European referees absolutely do not care about the supposed intensity of the derby. They are not intimidated by the crowd noise, and they have zero interest in managing the emotional temperature of the match. A studs-up challenge that catches an opponent late is a red card. The decision is clinical and swift.

We have seen this play out repeatedly over the last decade. Players completely accustomed to the SPFL's forgiving officiating are suddenly sent off in Europe for tackles they routinely make every single weekend in Scotland. Rangers midfielder John Lundstram has experienced this exact disconnect. Former Hibernian defender Ryan Porteous built an entire career on the edge in Scotland before moving south, frequently testing the limits of what local referees would tolerate.

The SPFL has actively cultivated a domestic environment where raw aggression is rewarded over a grueling 38-game season, and recklessness is routinely downgraded to a yellow card. Johnston simply played the game exactly how he has been taught it is officiated in this country.

VAR's ongoing Scottish nightmare

The introduction of Video Assistant Referees was explicitly supposed to eliminate these endless debates. It was sold to the clubs and the paying fans as the ultimate, infallible arbiter of truth. Instead, it has actively amplified the controversy week after week. The technology in the SPFL often feels less like a tool for objective reality and more like an unpredictable random number generator.

We are constantly reminded by the footballing authorities that the bar for intervention is exceptionally high. Yet, we routinely see pitch-side monitors consulted for innocuous handballs in the penalty area or fractional offsides that require digital magnifying glasses to determine. At the exact same time, reckless tackles that genuinely endanger an opponent are entirely ignored because the on-field official supposedly had a "clear view" and deemed it only worthy of a caution.

It is maddeningly inconsistent. When Johnston admitted he was lucky to stay on the pitch, he isn't just talking about the referee blowing the whistle. He is directly indicting the men sitting safely behind screens in the Clydesdale House VAR room.

If the right-back himself immediately recognizes that his challenge crossed the threshold into red-card territory, how do multiple trained professionals with access to slow-motion replays and multiple camera angles conclude otherwise? It points to a systemic failure in the review process. The officials appear so completely desperate to support their colleagues' on-field decisions that they refuse to intervene unless the error is aggressively, undeniably obvious. The final result is a disciplinary safety net full of massive holes.

The PR masterclass from a seasoned pro

There is, of course, a highly cynical way to view Johnston’s post-match comments. By freely admitting guilt immediately after the final whistle has blown, as highlighted in the Sky Sports coverage, he cleverly takes all the heat out of the inevitable Rangers complaints.

What can the opposition manager really say in his press conference to escalate the issue? The offending player has already agreed with them completely. It entirely deflates the outrage. It is a brilliant, highly calculated piece of media management. It successfully turns a controversial, potentially match-altering moment into a soft human-interest story about a player's rare honesty.

Instead of spending the entire week debating his malice or his tackling technique, national pundits end up praising his candor. Rangers fans, understandably, will find absolutely zero comfort in this supposed honesty. Knowing you were wronged by the officials doesn't magically put points on the league table. It doesn't alter the momentum of a tightly contested title race.

If anything, hearing the Celtic player freely admit he should have been sent off only rubs salt deeply into the wound. It strongly reinforces a long-held, deeply entrenched belief on the blue side of Glasgow that Celtic consistently get the rub of the green in these marginal, game-deciding moments. Celtic fans, naturally, have their own extensive, historically documented catalog of valid grievances against the referees. The wheel of Old Firm paranoia just keeps turning, heavily fueled by moments exactly like this.

Johnston's tactical importance to Celtic

This incident also significantly underscores exactly how vital Johnston has become to this current Celtic side. When Josip Juranovic departed for Union Berlin shortly after the 2022 World Cup, there were genuine concerns among the Celtic support about how the club would replace his attacking quality and defensive stability.

Celtic paid a reported £3 million to sign Johnston from CF Montreal, and his transition was seamless. He arrived with a clear point to prove and immediately looked perfectly suited to the unique madness of Scottish football. He might not be quite as technically polished as Juranovic when in possession, but he offers a necessary level of defensive grit and pure combative energy.

He is a classic tone-setter. When the team is struggling to find its rhythm, or when the opposition is dominating possession, Johnston is the player who reliably provides a lift with a crunching, perfectly timed tackle or a lung-bursting overlapping run down the right flank.

Losing him to a red card in the middle of a frantic derby would have dramatically shifted the tactical dynamic. Down to ten men, Celtic would have been forced into a deep, desperate retreat. Their attacking outlets would have vanished instantly. Rangers would have seized the total initiative, piling relentless pressure on a makeshift backline.

By staying on the pitch, Johnston ensured Celtic maintained their defensive shape and their constant counter-attacking threat. That is exactly why this missed call is so significant. It wasn't just a minor error in judgment; it was a massive decision that fundamentally altered the tactical reality of the game's decisive closing minutes.

The reaction from Ibrox

The reaction from the Rangers dugout is entirely predictable, and entirely justified. Philippe Clement has been highly critical of officiating inconsistencies since arriving in Scotland. When he hears a Celtic player openly admit to a red-card offense, his frustration must be boiling over behind the scenes.

Clement is a strict pragmatist. He expects structure, clear discipline, and rules that are applied uniformly to all teams. The unpredictable chaos of Scottish refereeing runs entirely counter to his managerial philosophy. He will rightly argue that his team was deprived of a clear numerical advantage at a vital point in the match.

And he is completely correct. Rangers were heavily penalized by the failure of the officials to apply the basic laws of the game. When a team is denied a clear advantage due to refereeing incompetence, it damages the competitive integrity of the entire league.

The deeper crisis in Scottish refereeing

We can, and should, briefly praise Johnston for his honesty. But we must simultaneously condemn the broken system that made his honesty necessary in the first place. Scottish football is currently facing an officiating crisis. It isn't a crisis of bias, despite what the late-night radio call-in shows constantly claim. It is a crisis of pure, undeniable competence.

The referees in the SPFL are operating under immense, unrelenting pressure. They work in a uniquely toxic environment where every single mistake is analyzed endlessly by millions of passionate people. But understanding that extreme pressure does not excuse the reality that they are consistently failing to clear the basic hurdles of their profession.

Consistently applying the established rules of the game shouldn't be this agonizingly difficult. When a player actively tells the media he deserved a red card, the Scottish Football Association needs to stop and listen closely.

They need to review the footage critically. They need to release the VAR audio to fully understand the communication breakdown between the pitch and the booth. They need to figure out how the safety protocols failed so entirely. But recent history tells us that simply won't happen. Instead, we will likely get generic, highly defensive statements. The officials will circle the wagons, citing the subjective nature of the sport. Nothing of actual substance will change.

A rare moment of absolute clarity

For now, we are left with Johnston’s jarring admission. It is a brief, sharp moment of reality injected directly into a fixture built entirely on myth, tribalism, and historical grievance.

He knew he was late to the ball. He knew the challenge was highly dangerous. He knew the referee had given him a massive, game-altering reprieve. It won't change the final result in the record books. It certainly won't bring peace and understanding to the divided city of Glasgow.

But it serves as a stark, unavoidable reminder that underneath the deafening noise of the stands and the spin of the post-match press conferences, the players know exactly what is happening on the pitch. Even if the men holding the whistles and watching the monitors seem entirely lost in the moment.

In a league where narrative and complaint often completely overpower the actual facts of a football match, Alistair Johnston decided to just state the obvious. He was incredibly lucky. Rangers were heavily penalized by incompetence. The refereeing apparatus failed completely. It really is that simple.

And yet, in the strange, endlessly debated world of Scottish football, stating the simple truth remains the most shocking thing a player can possibly do.