Rangers: Chris Sutton baffled by official update from Ibrox
Chris Sutton is baffled by the statement put out by Rangers hitting out at the SFA’s “clearly unacceptable” decision to postpone talks over a controversial decision in the Old Firm derby.
Philippe Clement suffered defeat for the first time as Rangers boss on Saturday (30 December) as Celtic ran out 2-1 victors in a blockbuster clash at Celtic Park but the game was marred by a refereeing decision not to award the Light Blues a penalty against Alistair Johnston for handball in the first half.
Rangers have been left “astonished” by the “unacceptable” SFA decision (Daily Record, 31 December) and are fuming at their failure to release the audio from discussions involving the VAR.
And Sutton speaking on the “It’s all Kicking Off podcast” (1 January, 40m:16sec) with Daily Mail journalist Ian Ladyman believes that Rangers’ protests are “irrelevant” given the penalty decision was superseded by the fact that Abdallah Sima was offside in the build-up to the incident.
He said: “I don’t know where Rangers are going with this because whichever way you want to look at this whether it was handball in that moment, I thought it was but it didn’t matter anyway because the offside call superseded that. It was irrelevant.
“Now, are Rangers going about this with their statement, they’ve used words like ‘they are astonished, they are concerned, they are perplexed’ by all this but are they doing this for the betterment of Scottish football, wanting this VAR audio? I don’t understand what their motive is because however the decision came about, it was the correct decision so they cannot argue with that.
“The way they’ve gone about this, I’m surprised. They’re getting themselves into an argument they don’t really need to, I don’t know maybe it’s a deflection tactic.”
Mindful
Sutton is absolutely right, the way Rangers are going about things isn’t right at all and they’ve certainly got to be mindful of how they react to what happened.
The statement put out by the club is a bit sketchy and best and could indeed be seen as a ploy to deflect their disappointing Old Firm defeat to Celtic.
The handball decision could not be made clearer by the fact that Sima was offside in the build-up to the Johnston handball incident and wanting to see how the decision-making process came about really is irrelevant.
Whether it was handball or not really doesn’t matter because Sima was clearly offside. Why Rangers are failing to acknowledge that fact is really baffling.
The Gers must simply pick themselves up and go again. Things could well have been different had Clement’s team been more ruthless in the final third and in their finishing. If so, we won’t be mulling over this needless incident.
In other Rangers news, one Steven Gerrard signing is surely finished at Ibrox.