Outrage continues after red card truth is revealed

As you’ll have seen Ibrox Noise’s Derek covered some of the controversies from last night’s shambles, and we’ll get to the football side in due course, but once again a refereeing nightmare has overshadowed a Rangers match and we have to look into that.

The big talking point for yours truly wasn’t just the fact John Beaton made it all about him with some ludicrous refereeing, it’s the fact he disrespected Steven Gerrard with no ounce of logic and every ounce of a snotty poncing referee with vulgar arrogance and zero sense of accountability.

Gerrard, rightly, was fuming about the booking. It may have been a stonewall pen, it may not have been, but what it clearly wasn’t was a dive. Morelos did definitely leap Strycek and the Polish goalie did catch him, even if not brutally, but it caught the Colombian who lost all balance and fell.

Sure, we MIGHT have complained at a ‘soft’ penalty had it been our man McGregor at the other end, but that’s only half of the story – it clearly wasn’t a dive.

So our Stevie, raging, goes onto the pitch to ask Beaton why he booked Morelos, and why he nor any of his assistants could see it was a penalty.

Beaton’s arrogance wouldn’t even let him look Gerrard in the eye, who understandably lost the plot and was, in fairness, rightly yellow carded.

As much as Beaton’s conduct was poor, Gerrard shouldn’t have shouted in his face, so we have no issue with the booking, regardless of how the ref behaved.

No, the issue we have is with what came after. Gerrard and Gary Mac, walking away, ruminated over all this together, before the assistant walked separately to the ref and gently asked for clarification – to which Beaton then inexplicably sent Stevie off (!)

This is like a player on a pitch getting a yellow for a bad tackle, his team mate asking the ref what was going on, and the ref then sending the original player off (!)

We should emphasise, Gerrard was walking away from Beaton at this point, and had nothing to do with it any more. Whatever he was maybe muttering under his breath is up to him, but from behind, Beaton inexplicably brandished a red card at the walking away Rangers boss.

This was nothing more than an absurd farce and a bit of an egotrip for the man in the middle.

Now, we should emphasise – this is NOT a hate piece, and we are not encouraging anyone to send abuse or otherwise harm the man – please, do not consider that.

He is a professional, even if inept, and we can’t condone the abuse referees have taken in recent months.

But there is certainly a question or two requiring answering, and his conduct last night simply wasn’t good enough.