The former striker for Celtic, Chris Sutton, has properly criticized Rangers for supposedly requesting that referee Willie Collum not officiate any of their games going forward.
After losing to Celtic in the Glasgow derby last weekend, Brendan Rodgers destroyed Philippe Clement’s perfect start to the Rangers managerial career, leaving the Ibrox club furious.
They contend that Alistair Johnston ought to have received a penalty after being handballed. Play went on, though, since VAR that day did not believe on-field referee Nick Walsh had made a glaring mistake.
However, it was later established that Abdallah Sima was offside prior to the “handball” incident, so the penalty that the Rangers were demanding would have been ineffective regardless.
However, this did not deter Rangers from releasing distracting remarks in which they expressed dissatisfaction about the non-penalty award and the absence of any mention of an offside check in the VAR audio, which the Govan hierarchy obtained access to in private following a request to the SFA to make public.
Rangers and the SFA are currently engaged in combat. So much so that they allegedly asked Collum to stop officiating Rangers games going forward at their meeting with the governing body.
Responding to that request, which was first made public by the team’s media partner Hand & Heart, Sutton has written in his weekly column for the Daily Record. He has criticized Rangers for attempting to establish a “very dangerous precedent”.