This season hasn’t been going for very long, and already I can tell you what it is going to be known for. It is going to be known for the sheer volume of “honest mistakes”.

It is already becoming a season defined by inexplicable decisions which, under normal circumstances, simply should not occur.

Three times this season, this blog has urged Celtic to act after games that we actually won because of dreadful refereeing decisions which happened during those matches. And, of course, the club doesn’t want to do it.

The club doesn’t want to react. The club doesn’t want to fight its corner in any meaningful way, shape or form.

This blog also urged Aberdeen to take a much more aggressive stance after James Penrice’s karate-kick challenge on one of their players in the Scottish League Cup semi-final.

They chose instead to do their talking behind the scenes, and they got brushed aside. Which, frankly, is exactly what I expected to happen.

What Aberdeen should have done was go public with their concerns immediately and make their position absolutely clear.

Because once these things disappear behind closed doors, the people responsible for explaining them are under no public pressure whatsoever to provide an explanation.

And this season, there are already far too many incidents requiring one.

Here we are again this weekend.

The Ibrox club were the recipients of a very soft penalty kick. Very soft indeed. James McFadden described it as “softer than soft”, and the replays showed minimal contact before James Penrice went down. VAR looked at it and chose not to intervene.

Then we had Celtic against Kilmarnock.

Kasper Høgh had a goal chopped off after VAR intervened over a Mika Baur challenge in the build-up, a decision which looked extremely harsh and which I still struggle to understand.

Later, John Beaton gave a free kick outside the box for a handball which had actually occurred inside the penalty area. VAR had to intervene and correct him, confirming what everyone in the stadium could see.

It is difficult to say whether the Ibrox penalty ultimately had a material impact on their game. They won 2-0 and it was only the first of the two goals.

Celtic’s disallowed goal did not alter the final direction of our match either because we eventually secured a 1-0 victory. We then had the opportunity to make it 2-0 from the penalty spot and missed it. That could have been costly.

But that would not have been the fault of the officials.

The officials had already done their bit to make it a difficult afternoon. We then proceeded to make it far more difficult than it needed to be. What is obvious, what is clear, is that officiating decisions are going to have an effect this season.

This campaign is already beginning to look as though it will be characterised by a number of them. Some will be small. Some will be big. Some will be so awful that they make you wonder what it is we’re actually watching.

The James Penrice incident is only the first glaring example.

A challenge which, in my view, should have been a red-card offence did not even bring a booking. It is doubtful that decision will be bettered this season in jaw dropping terms, because it was so clear and so blatant that it is a minor scandal it was waved through both by the referee on the day and by the VAR officials.

But there will be more.

Some little, some big, and some of them are going to change the direction of games.

Our club had better be ready for this. It had better be on the front foot, because the signs are clear, they are obvious and they are everywhere.

We ignore them at our peril.

Martin O’Neill, especially, had better be aware of that.

His job and his reputation depend on this campaign, and he is allowing that reputation not only to rest in the hands of our Board of Directors, which is silly enough, but in the hands of Hampden officials as well.

I would have thought he was a smarter man than that.

The words I heard most often yesterday were “clear and obvious error”.

So where exactly was the clear and obvious error in the move that led to Kasper Høgh putting the ball in the net?

The referee allowed play to continue. He saw the incident live and, in the moment, and evidently did not believe it was a foul. So why does VAR intervene, recommend that he looks at it again and effectively propose a foul that the referee himself did not originally see?

And why does John Beaton then change his mind about what he witnessed in real time?

Beaton couldn’t wait to knock that goal off.

But I still don’t know what the VAR officials thought they saw in the first place which justified intervening. If “clear and obvious” is supposed to mean anything, then that decision surely stretches the definition beyond recognition.

Then we come to the penalty kick.

Give me a break.

He thought the handball was outside the box? Is he kidding?

The entire player is on the wrong side of the line. The ball quite clearly crosses into the penalty area, and Beaton sees the handball because he gives the free kick.

Are we seriously supposed to believe that his visual judgement is so poor that he can identify the offence but cannot tell whether it happened inside or outside the penalty area?

It was one of those strange afternoons where you find yourself simultaneously cursing VAR and being grateful for its existence.

In one incident, VAR gives Beaton an opportunity to overturn a perfectly reasonable decision he made on the field. In the other, it leaves him no choice whatsoever but to correct something which was plainly wrong.

Yet if anything, I think the worst decision of the weekend came in Paisley.

And once again James Penrice was right in the middle of it, going down remarkably easily to win his side a penalty against St Mirren in a game where the Ibrox club were toiling.

If the pattern isn’t apparent to people already, then I honestly don’t know what games they think they’ve been watching.

I have watched every game involving the two Glasgow clubs this season, and the number of decisions which have gone in the Ibrox club’s favour, either negatively affecting Celtic or positively affecting them, is already enough to commission a mini-study.

And we’re barely into the season.

The worrying part is that I don’t think this is going to improve.

I think it is going to get worse.

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