Those of a certain vintage will remember Cyndi Lauper’s “True colours” and, after Jon McLaughlin was – correctly – shown a yellow card instead of a red, former Aberdeen player and BBC pundit, Willie Miller certainly showed his in a bizarre rant.
When Richard Gordon is the voice of reason, you know that a pundit has lost the plot, he’s far from Rangers best friend and is quite happy to make a mountain out of a Rangers decision mole hill and yet he, along with Chris Iwelumo, agreed with Bobby Madden’s course of action.
Speaking on BBC Sportsound and reported by The Daily Record, all Miller did was prove that he doesn’t know the laws of the game, you’d think that talking about the game every week would make that a prerequisite but here we are, after being incredulous at his colleagues refusing to criticise Madden, he then decided to go off on a rant when told that the tackle wasn’t dangerous and that it was a genuine attempt to win the ball:
“I don’t care! There’s no intent to get the ball, I didn’t think there was intent he just took McMullan out. McMullan is going at pace, it’s a mistimed tackle, he’s out of control and he takes the player down. I cannot see that just being a yellow in the modern game.”
The “modern game” dictates that it is a yellow card, the double-jeopardy law, because McLaughlin spread himself looking to block the shot or get a foot in, he can’t be sent off, much to Miller’s disgust, to compound things even further, when Iwelumo suggested that he didn’t think there was much contact the former Dons man threw his toys even further out the pram:
“There’s no contact with McMullan? If there’s no contact with McMullan it’s not a penalty.”
Again, this simply isn’t true, if a player has to take evasive action, there doesn’t have to be contact, it’s just the latest incident – involving Rangers – where a decision has been correct but because a pundit doesn’t like it, see Michael Stewart for numerous examples, they end up crying conspiracy rather than raining objective.
What chance do the officials have when, even when they are unequivocally correct, they still get criticised.