Rangers CEO Patrick Stewart may force League Cup final replay | OneFootball

After the Scottish Football Association’s vacuous apology fell on deaf Ibrox ears, it has emerged that following Belgium’s stunning precedent recently of replaying a match based on a fundamentally game-changing VAR error, that calls are starting to be loudly made for the League Cup final to be replayed too.

The shock violation of VAR protocol by VAR chief on the day Alan Muir in not informing John Beaton to review Liam Scales’ tug on Vaclav Cerny after awarding a free kick and not the penalty that it should have been, has led to the very real possibility the League Cup final will have to be replayed.

The calls are obviously loudest from Ibrox and Rangers affiliations, and new CEO Patrick Stewart has confirmed not only has he spoken to the SFA about that protocol violation, but that the discussions remain ongoing.

The only ‘flaw’ in this story of course is that had Rangers won on the penalties, the violation of protocol here would still have applied, and the match replayed, despite the fact the VAR call went against Rangers – had Rangers won the penalties, it would have ironically have been Celtic who would have had the case and the final replayed either way.

But no matter what, protocol was violated, rules were broken, and regardless of who won on pens, by purely the laws of the game the match has to be replayed.

If you break the rules of the game on the pitch, if protocol affects the result, then it’s not dissimilar to disqualification.

It renders the result invalid.

That is what Alan Muir did, he breached the guidelines, and the result cannot stand in its current form.

Will Stewart pursue this and force a replay?

We would expect him to try, yes.