Tom English rages at ‘grim’, ‘depressing’ incident at Ibrox live on BBC Sportsound as Rangers beat Dundee 3-1
The Rangers penalty award for a shirt-pull an Abdallah Sima was a “grim” and “depressing” indictment of modern football, according to Tom English.
The BBC Sport journalist raged live on Sportsound after James Tavernier put the Light Blues ahead in the 26th minute from the spot, following an Aaron Donnelly foul on Sima at a corner.
Leanne Crichton and Rory Hamilton both insisted it should never have been a penalty, despite the visiting defending having a strong hold of the Gers man’s shirt and preventing his jump to reach the ball, and English was more upset then either.
Crichton said (3.26pm): “It’s never a penalty, never a penalty. The penalties that have been given this season, I can understand it when the defender’s caught wrong side, they’ve got a handful of the jersey, and at no point can you really say how much it’s impacted the player’s ability to get on the end of it.
“When the defender’s goal-side like that it’s literally two players trying to gain an advantage. There’s nothing in that at all.”
Rory Hamilton said: “I didn’t even think twice about it, it’s just a challenge for the ball… there’s just simply not enough in it to warrant a penalty in that circumstance.”
English added: “It’s grim. It’s depressing. If this is what the game has come to that that’s a penalty then forget about it.”
Overreaction
Of course nobody outside of the Rangers fanbase likes the club regularly winning penalties, and the focus has now landed heavily on shirt-pulls at corners after Steven Naismith and Barry Robson both were furious about late awards for that reason against Hearts and Aberdeen respectively.
But Sima got his head to the cross despite being obstructed as his shirt was stretched and twisted, and without that he could feasibly have headed home.
It seems soft to many when a foul is given in the box for a challenge that doesn’t see the attacker tripped or wrestled to the ground, and obviously no fan would be pleased to see it go against their team.
But it was still a foul and few would have had an issue if it was given anywhere else on the pitch, so if the advantage is supposed to go to the attacker, as so many pundits regularly call for, it really wasn’t that much of an outrageous decision.
Kevin Clancy had to go to the monitor after a word from the VAR to award it, which no doubt irritated those who felt it was a soft award even more, but the whole point of video technology is to pick up incidents that are hart to spot in real time.
The issue comes when officials will then sometimes ignore similar infringements elsewhere, which is an issue, but not one Rangers can do anything about, and the penalty in their 3-1 win over Dundee hardly seemed worthy of such an offended response on Sportsound.
In other Rangers news, an unprofessional player has been mooted as a possible signing at Ibrox, with one pundit claiming he “is done”.