Four games for a dive is the new standard

Callum Slattery just got hammered with a 4-game ban for simulation. To put that in perspective, you can do slightly worse than that and miss fewer matches in some contact-sport disciplinary hearings. The SFA wants to act like they are cleaning up the game, but unless this becomes the absolute floor for every single player who tries to con a referee, it is just theatre.

Motherwell manager Jens Berthel Askou is the guy caught in the fire here. He isn't necessarily defending the act, but he’s calling out the obvious elephant in the room regarding officiating. As reported by the BBC, the reality of Scottish football is that consistency is usually as absent as a decent VAR decision on a rainy Tuesday night.

The inconsistency trap is real

We have all seen it. A guy gets his shirt pulled inside the box, goes down like he’s been shot by a sniper in the rafters, and the ref waves play on. Meanwhile, a different ref on a different pitch sees a breeze hit a forward and points to the spot immediately. If the SFA decides that Slattery’s specific tumble requires a month of disciplinary action, they better have a spreadsheet ready to ban every other diver in the league.

Why this leaves a sour taste

Football is a game of angles and luck, but discipline shouldn't be. When you have a governing body that treats one incident as a capital offense and ignores a dozen others, you lose the locker room. Players aren't stupid. They watch the clips, they see the bias in how fouls are called, and this latest ruling serves as a massive red flag for the rest of the season.

Unless this leads to a change in culture and consistent application, it is just a lesson for us.

That is the bottom line from Sky Sports coverage of the fallout. It is hard to argue with a manager who sees his depth chart gutted by a committee that seems to be pulling rules out of a hat. If the SFA wants to stop the theatrics, they need to start by stopping the wild variance in how games are policed on the pitch.

Ultimately, this is a bad look for a league already struggling with reputation management. Slattery might have been guilty of trying to sell a foul, but burning him at the stake while others get away with murder? That’s not fixing a culture. That’s just making sure everyone knows who the referees decide to hate this week.