When there is a 50-50 ball, you don’t think ‘the manager says we need to not get sent off’

watching from afar because he has picked up too many bookings or collected silly red cards. That is no use.

The manager has done nothing but praise Morelos in the last few weeks, and rightly so because he has been in fantastic scoring form and he has been playing really well.

But there is that other side of him that he has to improve on and there is only so much that the manager can do and only so much that he can say.

The best way for him to get back at defenders who have been winding him up or silence fans that have been giving him a hard time is to put the ball in the back of the net. That is what he is good at and what he does best. Morelos will now miss games

‘‘

with Dundee and Hamilton and he will be a real loss to Rangers in two fixtures that they just have to win.

There are no straightforward games in this league and both of those sides, like Aberdeen did on Wednesday night, will fight and scrap for everything against Rangers and Steven needs his players to raise their performance levels from Wednesday night.

It is obviously a problem to have received eight red cards at this stage of the season and the opposition will be aware of that. They will try and wind players up, either verbally or physically, to get a reaction.

But these things have been going on for decades, it is not as if it is something new. Players these days react differently, though, and you run the risk of being sent off. It doesn’t matter who you are, if you keep losing a man and need to play with 10 in a handful of matches, you are not going to get anywhere as a team.

Eventually it will tell on you and that was the point the manager was making this week when he said that the effort the side has had to put in recently could catch up with them later down the line.

There are only so many times you can rely on your team-mates to work harder for you and to get the result despite you being sent off. Like Wednesday, it doesn’t always happen and it wasn’t Rangers’ night.

You can’t keep asking your team-mates to dig you out of a hole and every player has to take responsibility for their actions and their behaviour.

We aren’t losing players for dirty or reckless challenges but collecting reds as regularly is a problem and it is one that has to end.