Rangers: Neil McCann reacts to Ibrox controversy v Motherwell on BBC
Neil McCann has slammed Motherwell defender Stephen O’Donnell for giving away a penalty against Rangers in their 2-1 win at Ibrox, despite a lengthy VAR call.
McCann insisted that, by going to ground, he gave Fabio Silva the opportunity to draw the foul after he was clattered into – stating it is a cardinal sin to go to ground in the box.
This has come amid the insistence that referee Alan Muir should have been able to award the decision himself, leading David Edgar to compare the official to Stevie Wonder.
Speaking live on BBC Sportscene [2 March, 19:46], McCann insisted: “It’s a cardinal sin for a defender to go to ground in the box, particularly when he doesn’t look anywhere near getting close to it.”
“He slides in, Fabio Silva has a little dink, cute dink over the top and he gets cleaned out.”
Rangers awarded a penalty despite SFA conspiracy
Muir is the latest referee to appear on the hit list of Rangers fans, after yet another disappointing performance from a referee – something which has started to become a bit of a theme of this season.
As McCann made clear, it’s a blatant penalty. O’Donnell goes to ground and crashes into Silva, allowing the striker to go down and draw VAR’s attention to the call. How the referee didn’t spot it makes little sense.
It’s clear that the controversy around these calls and decisions – or lack of decisions as the case may be – has been a talking point on far too many occasions this season after Rangers previously kicked off with Willie Collum for his poor penalty call at Parkhead.
Now, though, the focus has to be on Rangers’ performance. They cannot afford to deflect or blame anybody else. Clement and his team must be aware of where they went wrong and work quickly to fix it.
In other Rangers news, Ally McCoist has fumed at two players after what they did.
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