Steven Gerrard admits Rangers shouldn’t have had penalty

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Glasgow Rangers were unable to secure back-to-back wins and the Ibrox side have fallen to second in the Scottish Premiership.

Perhaps surprisingly, Steven Gerrard has admitted during BT Sport’s live post-match coverage of Rangers’ clash with Hibernian on Wednesday (19/12 from 19:15) that the referee made the right call by not awarding the Gers a penalty during the second-half.

Alfredo Morelos was clearly not happy when Craig Thomson decided that his shot had hit Mark Milligan’s shoulder rather than his arm. The Rangers ace felt that the visitors should have been awarded a spot-kick at Easter Road.

But after the goalless draw, Gerrard actually suggested that he agreed with the decision made by the official – despite pictures hardly providing a definitive answer of how high up his arm the ball hit.

“No, it’s hit his shoulder. It’s hit his shoulder,” he told BT Sport.

It is interesting that Gerrard publicly agreed with the official. Most managers would have surely expressed their anger at the decision and felt that their side were let down by the referee in that situation.

Rangers had more than enough chances to win the game, so he would have been forgiven for being hugely frustrated and it would be no surprise if he had taken that anger out on the decisions that did not go the Gers’ way.

He did have a problem with Ryan Porteous’ challenge on Lassana Coulibaly, but took a very honest approach when discussing the penalty claim.

Perhaps he was wary of giving his attackers an excuse. Rangers played extremely well for most of the game against Neil Lennon’s side, but they have now scored just two goals in their last five games. And insisting that they should have had a penalty may have deflected attention away from what has to be a genuine concern.