This Scottish Premiership title race is too close to call but one thing is certain … whoever loses out will blame the referees

Just because you are paranoid doesn’t mean they are out to get you. 

As the Premiership title race enters the home straight, it is almost impossible to predict who will end up lifting the trophy on May 13. Depressingly though, we can be sure of one thing: whoever loses out will blame the referees.

The fallout from Sunday’s results will be typical of every post-match interview over the course of the remaining 10 or 11 fixtures.

Danny Rohl felt Rangers were denied a ‘clear foul’ when Livingston defender Cammy Kerr brought down Mikey Moore in stoppage time. 

His Celtic counterpart, Martin O’Neill, was furious that VAR intervened to send Auston Trusty off, and added that his team should have been awarded a penalty in the moments afterwards when Liam Scales was held by a Hibs player in the box.

To focus on the importance of any one incident can be misleading, though. Every team in every game can point to something that they feel should have gone their way and didn’t. It goes with the territory.

This player should have been sent off, we should have had a penalty, why was there was so much stoppage time? This might sound like the language of the desperate but there is a more sinister aspect to it as well.

A long time ago in the annals of history, let’s say when Sir Alex Ferguson took the reins of East Stirling back in 1974, managers decided that applying pressure on referees would give their team an edge in the pursuit of victory.

Sir Dave Brailsford’s ‘marginal gains’ philosophy, infamously applied to British Cycling and Team Sky, is the principle that breaking down every component of performance and improving it by just one per cent creates a compound, significant, and winning advantage.

In football terms, this has translated to: let’s put pressure on the referee to favour our team at the expense of the opponent.

The thinking is that, in the white heat of the action, in stoppage time perhaps, the referee will feel that extra bit of pressure to give Team X a decision. That decision could give a team an equaliser, a victory. Maybe even a title?

The sight of a manager frothing at the mouth after a match as they discuss the refereeing decisions that ALL went against them is a staple of football all over the world. You can set your watch by it.

For supporters discussing the weekend’s action at the water cooler on a Monday morning, the teams change but the sentiment is the same. The referee was a disgrace. We were robbed.

For the officials, this criticism is part of what managers like to call the ‘noise’ of football. Sure, it’s not helpful or welcome, but it is to be factored in and ultimately ignored.

Referees accept that being the panto villain is their role in football.

Do you think officials in Norway are garlanded for their astute performances? 

Are Belgian whistlers cheered off the park for yet another display of shrewd officiating? 

Of course they aren’t, yet you would sometimes get the impression Scottish football believes it has a monopoly on what is perceived as poor referees and awful decision making.

The men in black may wince when they see managers, pundits or supporters criticising their performances and questioning their motives. But they won’t be surprised. 

And in a career where venomous condemnation comes regardless of performance, you can forgive them for turning a blind eye to these ‘appraisals’.

When their team’s need for a goal is great, the natives at Celtic Park and Ibrox will claim for a penalty whenever the ball is delivered into their opponent’s 18-yard box. 

Create the noise, make the claim, give the referee a decision to make. What’s the point in having 50,000 fans if you can’t try to sway the referee?

Handball! Penalty! Did you see something? No, but the VAR needs to have a look at that again. There must be something.

As the heat is cranked up in the title race this battle fever will be ramped up tenfold.

Come May, at least one of these officials will be cast into the spotlight as The Man Who Cost Us The Title.

The truth is a lot harder to swallow for fans and managers alike.

There is no agenda against your team. Referees don’t go into matches trying to play their small part in the global conspiracy to deny Team X the Scottish title.

Officials get it in the neck after every big game. When the confetti cannon fires and the medals are handed out in May, referees know that only brickbats are coming their way.