Rangers v Kilmarnock: SPFL Name Officials Who Derek McInnes Felt ‘Let Down’ By

Rangers can go top of the Premiership this Saturday. Derek McInnes has spent much of his career arguing with referees, and he now has a familiar name in the middle of Ibrox.

The match officials for Rangers against Kilmarnock were confirmed on Wednesday. Matthew MacDermid has the whistle, and the appointment will not be lost on a manager who has said publicly that he felt “let down” by officials this season. It is one of the first talking points of the week, and it arrives with a title-race backdro

Nothing about the group is unusual. These are experienced Premiership appointments, and MacDermid, a regular at the top level, has taken charge of plenty of high-profile fixtures. What makes the pairing notable is the history and the timingu

Managers in Scotland tend to treat referee appointments with a mixture of resignation and superstition. They know officials are allocated on a rota basis and that nobody can be avoided for ever. They also remember every difficult afternoon. For McInnes, MacDermid’s name triggers some of those memories.

Reports on the appointment describe MacDermid as having been “both hero and villain” for Rangers already this season. That sums up the nature of refereeing at this level. A good referee goes unnoticed. A single contentious decision can define a performance, and the narrative can then follow that referee for weeks.

The reports also point to a review in which MacDermid, working in the video room rather than on the pitch, called referee Don Robertson to the touchline monitor. Over a minute of play had passed, and no player had appealed for a penalty. Robertson was sent to look again at an incident that nobody on the field had thought worth protesting. How VAR is meant to operate has been a running dispute in Scottish football since its introduction, and that sort of delayed intervention feeds it.

The numbers are broadly favourable to Rangers. With MacDermid as referee, the club have won 10 games, drawn two and lost two. A record like that proves very little about the referee. Rangers are a big club who win most of their matches whoever is in charge, so a strong tally is what you would expect. It does give the club a sense of familiarity, and it means McInnes can go into the game with a statistical comfort blanket if he wants one.

Fans do not tend to look at statistics that way, though. Supporters judge referees by feeling and by individual decisions, and those memories tend to outweigh a spreadsheet. A referee can preside over a dozen routine wins and still be remembered for one penalty not given

The comments circulating again this week are clear. McInnes has said that if the officials had done their jobs properly, his side would probably have won the game in question. He also said the team felt “really let down” over certain decisions, and he repeated the point with obvious frustration.

He balanced that with a reminder that Scotland has plenty of good referees and good officials. McInnes has never been a manager who wants to burn bridges with the refereeing department. His consistent line, across several clubs, has been that he wants standards raised and not that he wants individuals punished.

The tone matters. A manager who simply blames referees for defeats quickly loses credibility. One who criticises selectively, and who praises the profession in general, tends to be heard. McInnes has built that reputation over years.

This is far from the first time McInnes has taken issue with officials, and his earlier complaints show how consistent his position has been. During his time at Kilmarnock he was among the most vocal managers on VAR, and his stance on the technology evolved in a way that tells you a good deal about his thinking.

When VAR was introduced to the Scottish Premiership, McInnes was one of its keenest supporters. Within a year or so he was demanding that referees “up their game”. After a controversial weekend in March 2023, in which Kilmarnock were denied a penalty for a handball in a draw with St Johnstone, he said his side had been “so badly let down” and that he was tired of receiving apologies from the refereeing department. He argued that a clear handball should be seen by everyone on the pitch and not left to the video room.

He also made a wider point that has stuck with him. McInnes said there was a danger that younger referees were getting used to officiating with VAR as a safety net and were therefore less decisive in real time. If a referee thinks a decision “looks like a penalty” but waits for the video room to confirm it, he said, the whole system begins to rely on the people in the van.

That criticism shows he has been thinking about the structure of refereeing for years, not only about individual incidents.

A year later, in March 2024, he returned to the subject. Speaking about inconsistency, he said the same offence was not being punished in the same way from week to week. He asked for clearer criteria on when red and yellow cards should be shown, when VAR should step in, and when referees should be given more autonomy. He also warned that VAR was accelerating younger referees into positions where more senior officials should have been on the pitch.

His complaints were never purely emotional. He made them in terms of process and consistency, which is why they carry weight

The list of Kilmarnock-era grievances is long. In October 2022, McInnes was furious when a late equaliser was disallowed by referee Craig Napier after a VAR check, in a defeat to St Johnstone. He accepted that the officials had a hard job. What angered him was that his side had been told VAR would intervene only in clear and obvious cases, and he felt that standard was being applied loosely.

In May 2024, at Ibrox, he questioned why referee David Dickinson had added eight minutes at the end of the first half. Kilmarnock led at the time through an own goal, but they conceded an equaliser before the break and later saw centre-half Joe Wright sent off for a handball on the goal line. McInnes accepted that a penalty was correct, but he thought a red card for something accidental was “extremely harsh” and raised the issue of double jeopardy. Rangers won 4-1.

Then there was the draw at St Mirren, when a Kilmarnock side reduced to ten men took a point in Paisley. MacDermid was the referee that day, and the afternoon is remembered at Rugby Park for one incident. Captain Kyle Vassell went to ground under a challenge, and a St Mirren defender then kicked out at him twice as he lay on the turf. No action was taken by the referee or by VAR. Vassell later said he told the referee at the time that the decision would “haunt” him. McInnes asked what the point of VAR was if it would not get involved there.

None of this means McInnes has a grudge against MacDermid in particular. It does mean that when the name is read out, the memories come back, and that is the context in which the appointment is being discussed this week

The setting adds another layer. McInnes now manages Rangers. He arrived from Hearts earlier this year on a three-year contract following the departure of Danny Röhl, and Hearts have since appointed Wouter Vrancken as their new head coach. The man who spent years campaigning for better refereeing from the touchline at Rugby Park is now at the centre of the biggest club in the country.

That changes how his words are received. When a manager at a smaller club complains about a referee, it is usually a story for a day. When the manager of Rangers does it, the story tends to run for a week, and it comes with accusations of pressure on officials. Rangers, like Celtic, have spent years in a fraught relationship with the refereeing system, and the club’s supporters are quick to see conspiracy.

McInnes will know that. His public comments so far suggest he intends to keep the same tone he has used for years: measured, direct, critical of standards without being personally hostile. That approach works better at a club the size of Rangers, where a harsher tone can be turned into a controversy of its own.

Refereeing appointments in Scottish football are made by the refereeing department rather than by clubs, and they are announced in the days before each round of fixtures. Clubs do not get a say, and any suggestion that they might be able to lobby for a particular name is something the authorities have always been keen to dismiss. The system is designed to spread the workload across the available referees, to reflect form and experience, and to avoid officials taking charge of the same team too often.

In theory this makes the appointment of a particular referee for a particular match a matter of logistics, not of strategy. In practice, fans rarely see it like that. A referee who has made a controversial decision involving a club will be remembered, and the next appointment will be read through that lens.

The size of the officiating pool is also a factor. Scotland has a limited number of referees capable of handling top-flight fixtures, and that means the same names come round quite regularly. A manager will see a referee several times a season. If a relationship is going to sour, it can do so quickly.

The VAR team adds to this. For each Premiership match, a referee, two assistants, a fourth official, a VAR and an assistant VAR are appointed. The video officials work remotely from a central hub, and the pairing of on-field and video officials is another source of debate. Fans and managers increasingly pay attention to who is in the van as well as who is on the pitch. This week, that means Grant Irvine and Gary Hilland.

The reaction to officials in Scotland has become a regular feature of the football calendar. Managers from across the league have said at various times that standards are inconsistent. Celtic’s manager once described officials as “incompetent” after a defeat. Kilmarnock’s frustration was frequent during McInnes’s time at the club, and managers at other clubs have voiced similar concerns.

Part of the problem is structural. VAR was introduced to reduce errors, and it has done so in some areas, but it has also created new areas of confusion. The threshold for intervention, the time taken for checks, and the communication with supporters in stadiums have all been criticised. Fans in the ground often have no idea what is being reviewed, and the lack of explanation produces frustration even when the final call is correct.

There is also a balance to be struck. Referees work under intense scrutiny, with every decision replayed from several angles. Most decisions are judgement calls, and two reasonable people can disagree about whether a challenge is a foul or whether a handball is deliberate. It is easy for managers to say standards need to improve, but the evidence of the last few years suggests the debate will not go away, because the underlying disagreements are about interpretation and not about facts.

McInnes understands both sides of this. His criticisms have often been accompanied by an acknowledgement that referees have a tough job. His stance is not that all officials are poor, but that the system can be improved and that mistakes should be acknowledged and explained.

The sporting stakes are high. Rangers can go top of the table with a win, and in a league where margins are fine, that carries real weight in the narrative of a season. A victory would show a team that has adjusted to a new manager and is beginning to find consistency. A slip would hand the initiative to rivals and invite questions.

Kilmarnock will arrive with their own motivation. They are a side who have a record of making Ibrox uncomfortable, and they will be keen to show they can compete. There is also a personal dimension for the Rangers manager, who spent a long and successful period at Rugby Park, and who will know the club and its supporters well. A reunion with a former club always carries some sentiment, even if professionalism rules it out of the dugout.

In a game like this, individual refereeing decisions can matter. A penalty, a sending-off or a disallowed goal can swing a match, and both benches will be aware of that. That is why the appointment draws attention. The reality is that most refereeing performances are unremarkable, and the vast majority of matches pass without a decision that dominates the post-match discussion. But the possibility is always there, and the history gives it extra force.

Several things will be worth watching on Saturday.Early tone. The way MacDermid sets the standard in the first twenty minutes, in particular on physical challenges and on dissent, will shape how the match flows. Referees who establish a clear line early tend to have an easier afternoon.

VAR intervention. The threshold for stepping in will be tested if there is a close call. Fans will be looking at how long checks take and whether the on-field referee is sent to the monitor or the video room makes a decision alone.

Management of the technical areas. Both benches will be passionate. Handling the inevitable complaints without escalating them is part of the job, and McInnes is a manager who can be demonstrative when he feels a call has gone against him.

The post-match reaction.However the match goes, the first interview will be telling. If Rangers win comfortably, the refereeing story will fade quickly. If it is tight, McInnes’s words will be scrutinised against his earlier statements.

The headline is that a referee has been appointed to a match and a manager has history with him. The story underneath is about a manager who has spent years pushing for better standards and a league still working out how to make video review feel fair. McInnes was an early supporter of VAR, became one of its sharper critics, and now operates at a club where every comment about officials is magnified.

It is fair to say that nothing about this appointment is improper. Referees are assigned by a system, and the system will not change because a manager has history with a name. What the appointment does is put the subject back on the agenda, and it gives McInnes a chance to show what he has said repeatedly: that he wants decisions to be right, that he respects the difficulty of the job, and that he will speak up when he feels his side has been let down.

If MacDermid and his team have a quiet afternoon, nobody will be talking about them on Sunday. If they do not, the argument that has followed McInnes for years will have a new chapter. For a team that can go top of the table, Rangers will want the match decided by what happens on the pitch and not in the video room