'VAR doing what it's supposed to' - SFA's Maxwell

VAR has been in place for five rounds of Scottish Premiership games

VAR "is working", insists Ian Maxwell, although the Scottish FA chief executive admits there are concerns over speed and communication.

Across those 30 matches, 19 penalties have been awarded, with 17 spot-kicks coming from the 63 previous top-flight games this season.

"It's working," Maxwell told BBC Scotland. "It's doing what it's supposed to be doing."

He added: "We had a call with Premiership managers and chief executives yesterday and showed them the statistics, showed them the improvement that it's having in terms of decisions.

"What we are actually finding is that we are spending more time talking about less wrong decisions than we had before VAR.

"I understand that it's been a high-profile introduction and it was always going to take time to settle in, as it has in every country it's been implemented in. The challenges we are facing are no different to anybody else.

"We've seen at the World Cup a number of decisions that have been questionable and the referees using it have been doing so for a lot longer than we have."

'A gold standard set-up'

Several managers have complained about lengthy pauses as video footage is assessed, while supporters are often left in the dark about the nature of reviews.

"I would disagree that they [fans] don't think it's working" Maxwell said when asked about those criticisms. "I'd say they have issues potentially with the time it takes, potentially with the communication opportunities we've got within inside the stadiums - and those are challenges we need to face.

"But when you take a step back and look at the number of decisions that are made pre-VAR, the number of decisions we're getting right now, that statistic has increased in line with the standard that we've seen across the globe.

"We've not done this on the cheap. Clubs have invested significant money and we are comparable with the vast majority of leagues across the world.

"We have a gold standard set-up. The difference is we don't have as high a number of cameras as a World Cup has [a minimum of six compared to 15-18], but the Hawkeye technology is the same all over the world, the software is the same, the hardware is the same.

"Fans will get used to it and players will as well."