Usually, it’s a goal or a save that football fans reflect on at the end of a season but Rangers fate could be in the hands of a tackle after the dismal performance against Motherwell.
There should never need to be a reliance on officials to win most weeks in the Scottish Premiership but it’s no wonder that Gers boss Philippe Clement was questioning why he lost Ross McCausland without even a free-kick being awarded – it was the definition of a clear and obvious error.
Alan Muir waved play on at Ibrox when Dan Casey went studs showing and foot raised to tackle the Rangers youngster, who couldn’t continue, as Motherwell took all three points – guess who scored the winner?
Rangers stumble as bumbling ref lets Motherwell off the hook
With an xG – expected goals – approaching four, depending on where you look, Rangers did more than enough to win the game by hook or by crook but a mixture of poor finishing, good goalkeeping and sheer bad luck, just couldn’t get the ball in the net.
Motherwell keeping all XI players on the park isn’t why Rangers lost, but if they had only had 10 men for 70 minutes, would they have been able to hold on, never mind win?
Think about the penalty save that Allan McGregor made from Giorgios Samaras or the hat-trick scored by Paul Gascoigne, there are moments in every title winning season where you look back and go “that was when I started to believe”.
The squad looked as though they had turned a mentality corner after beating Kilmarnock from a goal down but they couldn’t repeat the feat against Motherwell in what was a display that looked like all our best attacking players were missing.
Muir, or the VAR official, should have realised that Casey used excessive force, was reckless and endangered McCausland – how many more boxes did he need to tick?
Getting the ball first is an after thought now in terms of player safety.
With 70 minutes to play against 10 men, I’d have fancied us to scrape the win, however, we’ll never know.
Hopefully, it doesn’t become one of those “what if” moments.
