Rangers' penalty award in their 3-1 victory over Hibernian today was an 'absolute nonsense', according to Michael Stewart.
The pundit was in disbelief after VAR intervened to check an incident involving Nectarios Triantis and John Souttar inside the Hibs box.
After an on-field review at the pitch side monitor, referee David Dickinson decided to point to the spot.
This sparked a cheeky response from the official Hibs X account, who posted: "Penalty to Rangers. Who had 20 minutes?"
Surprisingly, James Tavernier missed, but Scott Wright followed up. VAR then got involved again and ruled the goal out after the winger was judged to have encroached on the box.
But ex-Hibs and Hearts midfielder Stewart insists it was not a penalty, and he couldn't believe it was awarded by the officials.
"It's a nonsense," he said on BBC Sportsound. "Okay there's a collision and a coming together but that is not a penalty kick. If you are giving penalty kicks for that... I mean give up, seriously!
READ MORE: The rules that explain Rangers vs Hibs penalty - or do they?
"The ball's gone over Triantis' head, he's backtracking, he's jumped up to try and header it and he's getting booked and a penalty given against him.
"That is an absolute nonsense. If you think that's a penalty kick, you have to understand that when you're playing a game of football, there's an element of risk that you're going to have accidents and people are going to get hurt.
"It doesn't have to be a foul or someone has to be blamed for anything. There's a coming together between two players, the guy is trying to head the ball.
"A total injustice? Yeah. There's no doubt that John Souttar has been caught there but what's Triantis meant to do? He's not done anything that's out of the ordinary. He's jumped up to try and header the ball that's gone over his head."
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel