BBC Sportscene pundit Michael Stewart does not believe the incident involving Alfredo Morelos and Kirk Broadfoot warranted a red card for the Colombian, amidst speculation he could be cited by the SFA disciplinary panel this week.
The 22-year-old tangled with the Kilmarnock defender after the half-time whistle on Saturday, which The Scottish Sun believe could result in a ban for the upcoming derby match against Celtic.
Stewart though, while reiterating the player should not be getting involved in silly incidents, believes he would have a received a yellow card at most had the officials spotted it.
As quoted by The Scottish Sun, the BBC man said:
I think the pictures show that Kirk Broadfoot was trying to be cute and antagonise him.
You see him standing on Morelos’ heel deliberately. But Morelos, as much as people try to antagonise him, he can’t react like that because he’s fortunate the officials didn’t see that.
It would have been a booking, there’s no more involved.
We can’t reiterate it enough. Rangers need Alfredo Morelos to be involved in every game.
They can’t have him missing games through suspension. So all those little bits where players are trying to antagonise him, it’s very difficult, but you’ve got to ignore it.
Broadfoot clearly knew what he was doing in trying to get a reaction out of the 29-goal striker and although Morelos should not have reacted, he showed Kilmarnock in the second half the other side of his game, netting a superb goal after turning the Killie defence.
Hopefully the SFA do not see this nothing incident as anything more than it was and there are no battles with the compliance officer and disciplinary panel this week.
We need Morelos firing on all cylinders for the upcoming derby away to Celtic.