George Overhill

Mon 22 August 2022 18:40, UK

Rangers midfielder John Lundstram should not have been sent off for his tackle against Hibernian, according to Dermot Gallagher.

The Englishman was the first of two red cards shown to Giovanni van Bronckhorst’s side in a game which eventually saw the nine-man Gers pegged back to 2-2 in injury time.

Leading 2-1 in the second half Lundstram brought down Martin Boyle to halt a counter-attack and was shown a straight red by Willie Collum, before Alfredo Morelos was give the same for what was judged to be a swinging arm to the face, and while Gallagher agreed with the second red, and the Bears’ penalty award, he took issue with the first sending off.

The similarity of the challenge to both a foul on the former Sheffield United man by Jake Doyle-Hayes in the same game, which was deemed a booking, and one in England which saw Newcastle’s Kieran Trippier have his red card downgraded to a yellow after a VAR review for bringing down Manchester City’s Kevin De Bruyne, made Lundstram’s red all the more glaring.

Speaking live on Sky Sports Ref Watch, in a clip posted to Sky Sports Scotland’s Twitter, the Irishman compared the challenge to the Trippier one, saying: “They are almost carbon-copy incidents. I understand why he’s given a red card on the day. I think if he looks back at that he will think the same as Jarred [Gillett] did with Kieran Trippier, that it wasn’t the tackle he thought.

“I think Lundstram was very, very unlucky, and a yellow card would have been enough.”

Gallagher felt the Doyle-Hayes foul being lower must have made the difference to Collum, although he said both should have been bookings, while former Liverpool and Aston Villa full-back Stephen Warnock added: “I think both challenges were yellow cards, but the [earlier] challenge on Lundstram actually looks worse.”

Consistency

It was a damaging day for van Bronckhorst as the club dropped their first points of the season, and will be without two important players via suspension, pending appeal.

Morelos won’t get the benefit of the doubt in situations like the one on Saturday (20 August) because of his reputation, where another player might be deemed to have accidentally connected and be given a yellow.

But the Lundstram sending off appears harsh whichever way you look at it, and with the appeal already put in from Ibrox there has to be hope that it gets overturned quickly.

While the lack of VAR in Scotland until later this season feels like a key element here, there is no guarantee that were it in place a fair outcome would have been reached.

Just as the three tackles at Easter Road and St James’ Park were compared, there was also a striking similarity to another Premier League incident last season, that saw a tackle by Allan of Everton on Newcastle’s Allan Saint-Maximim upgraded from a yellow to a red by the video assistant’s intervention, so VAR or not it anything could happen.

Football is full of judgment calls, and different sets of fans will likely always see proceedings entirely differently, as evidenced by Hibs being upset that a penalty was given for a foul by Rocky Bushiri but a later one wasn’t given to him, although Gallagher agreed with both of those calls.

However, when there is such a clear similarity between two tackles in the same game, and the same referee only sends one player off it is a glaring inconsistency, and it was the Light Blues who bore the brunt of it.

How Collum saw one for what it was but reached immediately for a red the second time has to be explained because it makes little logical sense.

In other Rangers news, mooted transfers to Glasgow for fading big names in England saw a talkSPORT pundit stand up for the interests of Rangers and Celtic.