Rangers wait to find out if Kemar Roofe’s two-game suspension for his challenge on Murray Davidson has been extended but one former Ger feels that it shouldn’t even be up for debate.
Speaking to Football Insider, Alan Hutton is worried that it will set a trend for every tackle – even if the referee has seen it – to be analysed by the disciplinary panel, the complete opposite to why the process was brought in.
So what has Hutton said?
When asked to reflect on Roofe being cited despite being yellow card by the match referee, he said:
“It’s very worrying, for me, moving forward, because the referee is basically saying I’ve seen the incident and I gave him a yellow card, which he thought it was worth.
“There was no malice, I’ve seen a million times with strikers, they try and step over the ball to get their body between the player and ultimately the ball – a striker’s tackle, whatever you want to call it – and he has caught him, there’s no doubt about that.
“The worrying thing is if he does get banned for this, moving forward, that’s going to have to mean that there’s going to have to be consistency with that moving forward. Everybody, if it’s a tackle we judge to be a little bit more than a yellow, the panel’s going to have to look at them all.
“It’s very worrying where they’re going with this at the moment. Everybody’s going to want every single tackle, every single weekend, looked at. I don’t know, how are they going to cope with this?
“The way they’re going at the moment this panel who are judging every other tackle, they’re going to be snowed under with complaints moving forward because it’s tackles that have been dealt with on the pitch already.
“It’s totally different if the ref doesn’t see it. If he doesn’t see it then there’s an opportunity for them to step in but if the referee’s made his decision, let him ref the game.”
So is Hutton correct?
Absolutely, the Compliance Officer shambles was first introduced to pick up foul play or cheating that had been missed by officials on the day, however, we are now seeing – particularly with Rangers players – that even if the referee sees it, they could still face further retrospective action.
Compliance Officer?
Reform it.
Scrap it.
The goalposts have been moved, plain and simple, and only one club seems to be worse off as a result and it certainly isn’t Celtic, despite their claims of conspiracies and agendas.
Rangers have tried before to invoke change in a deeply flawed system only to be met with resistance – almost as if somebody doesn’t want to be treated the same way as everyone else.