Rangers star told he was 'overprotected' by ref in Motherwell draw as bemused boss asks penalty question
The Motherwell manager has reacted to his side’s game against Rangers.
Stuart Kettlewell says he’s been left dismayed by more refereeing controversy after Motherwell drew 2-2 with Rangers in the Premiership.
The hosts were 2-0 up at Fir Park before the Ibrox club pinned them back. At 2-1, however, Tony Watt scored a goal after Jack Butland failed to deal with a corner. The goal was chopped off for a foul on the Rangers keeper, which has caused some debate.
Boss Kettlewell was then sent off in the aftermath for a VAR check over a possible red card for Lennon Miller. He said of the Watt incident: “I'm just left amused by one, the on-field decision. For me it's completely over-protection of the goalkeeper. I would need to see whether the ball's in play or not, but if we're saying that the level of contact from Tony Watt justifies the foul, then I would start to argue does the level of contact from Butland towards Tony Watt to shove him out the way to initiate it, does that then merit a penalty kick?
“Because that's where I think we're getting to. The answer's no to either, it's not a penalty, it's certainly not a free kick. I think I seen an incident a few weeks ago, I think it was Tottenham, and they scored direct from a corner, and there's a similar type of incident.
“What do they do down south? They have a quick look at it, they check it and they give the goal and they carry on with the rest of the game. So it's two people's interpretations, two different organisations' interpretations. Down there, they play on, there's no overprotection of the goalkeeper, but for some reason here, we've decided that there's enough to merit a free kick.”
On his red card, he added: “I end up watching the rest of the game from the stand and as usual they'll throw the book at us and there'll be another suspension to come and all the rest of it. But I'm not going to change. I feel passionately about the game.
“I feel passionately about this football club and I feel passionately about what I see on the pitch and call it as I see it. I was flabbergasted that it was given as a yellow card (Miller’s challenge). And again, I'm a passionate person. Sometimes you'll see a bit of emotion. There was nothing abusive or anything like that towards the fourth official, towards the linesman.
“I was just flabbergasted with the decision. I've since seen it and I will stand by what I said. And then the second one... let's put it down to a breakdown of communication between myself and the fourth official. And I'm probably not prepared to go into any further than that. But as I say, I am the type of person that wears my heart on my sleeve and I'm not going to change for that.”
On the game, Kettlewell was delighted with the first half display, but wanted more aggression at the start of the second half. He added: “I thought we'd done what we set out to do in the first half. You have an idea, maybe you can try and get at the opposition, you've got an idea of what they're going to try and bring towards you.
“Maybe one or two surprises in their team selection, but it didn't really change much in our mind. And quite clearly here, the atmosphere in here at half-time is that Motherwell supporters are over the moon. Rangers supporters are completely discontent with what they're seeing.
“Our message at half-time, and this is my biggest frustration in the game, is that we come hard at the start of the second half. And what I mean by that is that we show good reactions, that we try and play the game in their half of the pitch. We continue to try and play and get in their face as much as we possibly can, and we didn't. It took us just that wee bit too long to get ourselves into the second half.
“That's twice it's happened, it happened at semi-final for us against them when we were one up. And it's happened here again, not good enough reactions inside the penalty area. But those are the bits that I start to nitpick at for us to try and get better as a football club. We hung in there in the end, of course we did, we put ourselves into a position at the end where at times we were collapsing too deep, at times we were inviting Rangers on to us. And again, for us to get better, we're going to have to be able to handle this type of schedule against that level of opposition.”