Rangers: Stephen McGinn rages over ‘mental’ controversial Scott Wright incident v Hibernian
Rangers were on the end of a “mental” piece of officiating during their Scottish Premiership win over Hibernian, according to Stephen McGinn.
Philippe Clement’s side returned from the international break with a 3-1 win at Ibrox on Saturday (30 March) but felt they should have had a fourth goal after Scott Wright’s first-half effort was ruled out following a VAR review.
The winger was adjudged to have encroached into the penalty area as James Tavernier took his penalty, which was awarded in controversial circumstances and BBC Sport pundit McGinn was left baffled by both refereeing calls.
Speaking on The Go Radio Football Show (1 April, 43:00) he said: “It’s just mental. There’s not a single Rangers fan in that ground who watches that back and says it’s a stonewall penalty.
“There’s going to be contact and to give a penalty and then top it all off to give encroachment and disallow the goal. What are they doing? What are they seeing?
“Seriously, I don’t understand because if you watched every penalty that’s been scored in the Scottish Premiership in the last few years I bet you there’s been more encroachment. They’re not helping themselves.”
Why did Scott Wright’s goal against Hibernian get ruled out for Rangers?
As McGinn suggested, so many penalties in the Premiership could be ruled out if you went through and checked any potential encroachment with a fine-toothed comb, but for whatever reason only Wright’s strike was punished.
While there will always be cries of conspiracy across the Scottish game whenever one of the Old Firm sides have a controversial decision go against them, it did seem ridiculous that the officials at Ibrox could get two decisions wrong in such quick succession.
There was contact on John Souttar for the awarding of the penalty, but whether that warranted a spot-kick is open to debate. However, for Wright’s goal to be ruled out because of half a toe is nothing more than ridiculous.
Hopefully, the officials north of the border will up their game between now and the end of the season as it would be a huge shame in Sunday’s (7 April) Old Firm clash or the entire title race was decided by a poor piece of officiating.
In other Rangers news, Barry Ferguson has admitted he has “no doubt” Callum McGregor will start for Celtic in the Old Firm derby
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