Not VAR's fault Hibs are bottom six, but it hasn't helped

Emiliano Marcondes opened the scoring with a free kick into the top corner after Martin Boyle had been fouled 35 yards from goal. You’ll be hard-pushed to find a better free-kick scored this season in the Scottish top flight.

Marcondes’ goal was only marginally more impressive than Hibs’ attacking play throughout the match, as we turned the screw on Craig Levein’s hapless Saints. It was in stark contrast to the approach we took against the same team just a few weeks back at Easter Road, when St Johnstone were able to bat Hibs’ attacks away with relative ease.

It’s worth comparing Hibs’ approach in the two games. In the first, which St Johnstone won 2-1 in Leith, Hibs had 71% possession, 503 passes, and 13 shots, with six on target.

On Saturday, we had 52% possession, 406 passes, and 16 shots, of which eight were on target. You can make a case that Hibs dominated both games, and we did – however, we were much more aggressive and purposeful with our attacking play on Saturday and it meant the game was far more enjoyable to watch.

Gone was the patient passing around the back, in favour of a more direct approach that set Martin Boyle and Myziane Moalida at the St Johnstone defence time and time again, and they had no answer to it. Had Hibs scored eight times on Saturday, it wouldn’t have flattered us. It was only really Mitov in the St Johnstone goal that kept the score respectable.

Getting the early goal helped, of course. St Johnstone couldn’t sit in on a one-goal deficit, but that wasn’t the key factor in the performance. Hibs played an attacking style that hasn’t been seen nearly enough this season – and it left me thinking about what might have been if we’d seen the team take the shackles off earlier in the season.

READ MORE - The two VAR decisions that potentially cost Hibs a top-six place

The SFA released details of the independent VAR review this week, which cited a further ten examples of VAR’s involvement resulting in an incorrect outcome. Of those, two went against Hibs – the first instance was against St Johnstone, when Hibs had a penalty appeal turned down after visiting goalkeeper Dimitar Mitov appeared to wipe out Marcondes, and the other for Hearts’ penalty which led to their equaliser against the run of play at Tynecastle.

Who knows what would have happened had Hibs got that penalty against Saints a few weeks back – would the early goal have opened the game up as Marcondes’ strike did on Saturday?

It blows my mind that two such obvious and ultimately costly errors could happen with VAR in place. We are not talking about a heat of the moment, ref-gets-one-look-at-it mistakes here. These are mistakes where the referee and the VAR operators can take their time to review an incident – forensically in some cases – to make the right call.

Hibs have every right to ask how this can be explained away as a mistake. When Hibs conceded an injury-time penalty at Easter Road to Celtic, the footage of Joe Newell’s tackle on Kyogo was slowed down, viewed from different angles, and freeze-framed until they found enough footage to give the penalty.

How do you explain a keeper wiping out a forward and leaving him in a heap being overlooked? It's bonkers. Should they not have slowed that down, and given it the same scrutiny as Newell’s tackle against Celtic?

It’s not VAR’s fault we are bottom six, and I’m reluctant to make excuses for a Hibs side who have been our own enemy far too often this season. But at the same time, you can’t say we’ve been dealt a fair hand with VAR this season either.

I was broadly in favour of VAR when it was being introduced, but I’ll happily admit I was wrong. It’s not getting big decisions right, its application seems to be to find reasons to disallow goals, and it is absolutely murder for the fans in the stadium as we have no clue what’s going on.

Either improve it or bin it - but either way, Hibs should be asking for a refund for their share of the cost this season, as it’s certainly not worked as it was sold.