Michael Stewart takes swipe at James Tavernier after Rangers controversy v Livingston
Michael Stewart has taken a sly swipe at James Tavernier after the Rangers captain once again profited from the penalty spot against Livingston.
The Light Blues continued their unbeaten run under Philippe Clement on Sunday (12 November) with a 2-0 win at the Tony Macaroni Arena, with Cyriel Dessers and Tavernier, but the Gers captain smashed his first-half penalty wide early in the clash.
Ross McCausland had seemed to go down fairly easily in the penalty area, only for Tavernier to miss the target from 12 yards. The Englishman made amends with his second-half spot-kick that left Shamal George stunned in the Livingston net, but still received plenty of criticism from pundits.
Speaking on BBC Sportscene (12 November) Stewart asked whether or not he felt that the 32-year-old could be in the race for the Premiership Golden Boot, quickly replying: “Well, if he gets two penalties a game then he’s going to hit a fair few, isn’t he?”
Sour grapes
It shouldn’t come as a surprise to see a pundit unhappy with the amount of penalties that Rangers receive as this is typically a regular occurrence every season, with Tavernier’s goal record always hit with the caveat of most of his strikes coming from the spot.
Sunday’s game did see the Light Blues profit from two reasonably controversial penalty calls, with the first-half spot-kick coming after McCausland fell to the ground with very little contact from Livingston keeper George. Most seem to be in agreement that the decision was soft and Rangers were lucky to get it.
The second penalty awarded to the away side was certainly a handball in the modern day, with Michael Devlin’s hand high in the air, even if he had no intent to make any sort of contact with the ball.
Although it is easy to criticise Tavernier for only scoring from the spot, Sunday showed that it is by no means an easy task to convert those chances. There are few players in Scotland that you would feel more confident in taking a penalty than the Rangers skipper, but his first-half effort ended up being so poor.
He’ll have to slot home more consistently from 12 yards to pick up this year’s golden boot.
In other Rangers news, Kenny Miller slammed Tod Cantwell’s performance against Livingston labelling it “petulant”