Rangers: Sky Sports pundit claims Motherwell’s Dan Casey knew he hurt Ross McCausland at Ibrox

Stephen Warnock suggested Dan Casey knew he had injured Ross McCausland in the win over Rangers at Ibrox.

The Sky Sports pundit reacted on 4 March to footage of the challenge from the 2-1 Motherwell victory, where the defender didn’t receive a card and then scored the winning goal, to claim his reaction after the challenge with the Gers winger indicated he was aware of what he had done.

McCausland went of hurt to add to the once-again growing Rangers injury problem, with Philippe Clement saying the 20-year-old had been “kicked off the pitch”.

Warnock said: “It’s a poor tackle isn’t it? Even afterwards the way he sort of tells the player to get up, that’s a sort of signal as well that you know you’ve hurt someone.”

Sue Smith agreed: “Yeah it’s a poor challenge. I can’t believe that he wasn’t at least booked but looking at that it has to be a red card. He’s late, it’s aggressive and the poor lad had to go off on crutches.”

Ross McCausland joins Oscar Cortes in major Rangers injury headache for Philippe Clement

It’s unlikely that Casey intended to injure McCausland, and the Irishman can reasonably argue he wasn’t late since he got the ball first.

But clearly the only person who will know better the extent of the clash will be the Light Blues winger himself.

In the circumstances the Well defender quite possibly was expecting some sort of repercussion on the pitch, but made the most of the fact that none was forthcoming by heading in the winner.

Were he sent off as various have now insisted he should have been wouldn’t have necessarily meant the Light Blues avoided defeat on a definite off day for the home side.

Much has been made of the extensive involvement of the officials as Celtic passed up the opportunity to go back to the top of the SPFL, but the lack of any reaction from the ones at Ibrox for this one was probably more surprising.

The Gers have three games before they are back in league action and Clement has to find a way through in both the Europa League and the Scottish Cup with his attacking options extremely threadbare, so the McCausland injury was the last thing he needed.

In other Rangers news, a BBC pundit made a pair of damning accusations towards a Light Blues player for his showing at Ibrox.

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