Rangers need to stop blaming the referees

The only time this season a bad result for Rangers hasn’t resulted in whining at the referee was against Celtic – fans slaughtered the players, yes, but the referee, Nick Walsh, was spared the angst.

But in every other bad result, the referee has by and large been blamed for the outcome.

At Easter Road, despite the fact we were absolutely honking, Collum’s two red card calls were blamed for our draw. Yes, there was dubiety over Lundstram’s, but seriously, even a 10-man Rangers should have been able to beat a rank Hibs.

In Belgium, the referee was once again being slated over a number of decisions, despite the fact they were all correct. And again, the result was largely put on his shoulders.

Same in Holland, fans slaughtered the ref yet again, even though once more the side fell well short.

And then v Napoli, Antonio Lahoz was blamed for everything.

See, the part we can’t reconcile is our supporters have been blaming Scottish referees for so many bad results our club has, but then it goes to a world class standard of referee, and the refereeing is way better, so our fans say. But then they still complain when a call goes against us.

And last year, that terrible VAR call, admittedly by Lahoz, against Morelos v Dortmund for Kent’s goal aside, the refereeing in fact mostly favoured Rangers. We got tonnes of penalties we didn’t even notice, and widely the refereeing was praised for being what happens when ‘proper’ refs take charge of our matches rather than Scottish ones.

But this season? We’re terrible, and now we’re blaming referees. At every level.

Are fans trying to tell us there’s just a global conspiracy against our club both domestically and in the Champions League?

Complete tot.

Refs make errors. Rarely is there genuinely any bias, and even more rarely is it anti-Rangers.

This ‘blame the ref’ mentality is tedious, and reeks of sour grapes – we’re just poor at the moment, and while some dodgy ref calls will go against us now and again, we got away with a massive one on Sands in the league. Don’t see too many fans ‘whining’ about that one.

Leave the refs alone – they’re human. Let’s sort our team out before blaming outside forces for bad results.