Gerrard’s right, some of the SPFL refs aren’t even fit enough for our game
Gerrard was emotional, but I’ve seen plenty to back up his rant on referees
I CAN understand why Steven Gerrard has said what he said after the game with Aberdeen and I know how he would have been feeling, especially after seeing how Rangers played.
He will have been talking through emotion and thoroughly disappointed at not getting the three points, which they deserved.
Even with 10 men, Rangers were the better team. When you concede in the last minute, it is going to be emotional.
But that doesn’t take away from the point he was making about referees and the officials in this country are a problem, a massive problem.
I don’t think they are consistent enough, I don’t think they are fit enough and I don’t think some linesmen can keep up with play.
The biggest worry for me is the level of consistency from them. In England, you have full- time referees and they are training every day but our guys are maybe training Tuesday and Thursday and have a game at the weekend.
In this country we are used to seeing referees make howlers every week and how Dominic Ball didn’t get sent off at the penalty, nobody will ever know. It is one of the most blatant red cards you will ever see.
At the Morelos one, it is easy for refs to say ‘ he has got a short temper’ and even though they might not have seen it that clearly, they still give it. They think Morelos is that sort of player so they give it and gamble on it. That is wrong.
I know they have got hard jobs but they don’t make it easy for themselves with some of the decisions that they make, not just in that game but in general.
I was at the Accies game on Saturday and I couldn’t believe some of the decisions that were made. Yes, refs will always make mistakes but some of the calls are way off.
It is going to cost someone money or their job at the end of the day and that is not acceptable. There has to be a concern about the standard of refereeing across the board.
Could there be a cash injection from somewhere to help them go full- time and to raise the levels?
The game here is in a healthy state and the fact that our teams are doing well in Europe this season is a pointer towards that. But something has to be done about our officials because that could kill it.
I don’t want to go on a referee- bashing rant here and I wouldn’t say there is a bias amongst them. It is not as if they go to their sessions and say ‘ let’s go for this club or this manager or player’.
I just think they aren’t good enough and the inconsistency levels are a real problem when you look at some of the decisions that have been made.
When I was manager at Killie, I saw linesmen that weren’t able to keep up with play and they were gambling on whether it was offside or not because they weren’t fit enough to get up and down.
That was a big frustration for me and I know I wasn’t the only one that thought that. I would go in with other managers after games and I wasn’t the only one that was concerned about fitness levels.
I know I probably wasn’t the nicest player to referee from their perspective but there has got to be a mutual respect there. I phoned up the Head of Refereeing, John Fleming, a couple of times for a chat.
When I was playing, there were times I felt we would have a difficult day when I saw a particular referee in charge of our games.
I won’t name him. But I used to say to him and he would just laugh and smile and he really wound me up.
He would never give us anything at all and I felt he was scared of some of the players and scared to give decisions against them.
When you look back, there will be instances for every club and they say that bigger clubs tend to get all of the decisions, especially at home when you have 50,000 fans behind you.
But when you look at some of the decisions that have been given against Rangers, you can see why Steven wants to come out and fight for his team and his club.
There is maybe a degree of Steven trying to adopt a siege mentality and it being ‘ us against the rest’ within that dressing room. He needs to have the players with the mindset that they just need to win no matter what.
So it doesn’t matter what happens in the game, you have to win it. He would have had that as a player and you can already see the impact he has had.
Rangers dominated the game even with 10 men and you got a sense of leadership coming from the park and from the dugout. You could feel the difference. If that was the start of last season and Rangers had gone down to 10 men as early as that at Pittodrie, the players would have been petrified.
It was completely different on Sunday. Rangers will improve this season under Steven Gerrard, there is no doubt about it.
Only time will tell whether they have enough to actually win the league or not. But you can definitely see the signs of improvement under him already.