Dermot Gallagher shares ‘surprise’ admission after incident in Rangers win v St Mirren
Dermot Gallagher has praised the officials for awarding Rangers a penalty in the victory over St Mirren on Sunday (8 October).
Speaking on Sky Sports’ Ref Watch on Monday (9 August, 11:52am), the former Premier League referee said his “biggest surprise” was that the VAR managed to alert the situation to the on-field official after it was initially missed.
He added that it was definitely the correct decision to award the Gers a penalty and the red card to Ryan Strain, with James Tavernier converting from the spot to set his side on the way towards picking up a 3-0 win in Paisley.
“I’m not surprised it was missed on the field,” said Gallagher. “But my biggest surprise is seriously how well it was picked up because when I saw this clip earlier today I said ‘what’s the problem?’.
“They showed it to me three or four times and I said ‘oh, it’s handball’, so for the VAR to pick that up in normal play and say to the referee to stop the game and go and look at the screen, I think is amazing. But absolutely 100 per cent correct decision.”
Due credit
It’s not very often that the officials receive credit for decisions they make, but they definitely do deserve it on this occasion for making the right call.
It was an extremely difficult one to spot in real-time as Zak Lovelace fired a ball across the six-yard box and Strain appeared to subtly move his hand towards the ball.
It took a few minutes for them to eventually make the decision, but the most important thing is that they got there in the end.
That was a massive moment in the game as it handed the Gers a penalty and meant it was going to be a long afternoon for St Mirren having been reduced to 10 men.
While it wasn’t entirely convincing from the Light Blues from that point onwards, the three points would have been very welcome on the back of a difficult week.
In other Rangers news, a Sky Sports pundit was baffled at a high-profile manager being linked with the Ibrox job.