Morelos could have sparked mayhem, says Levein

CRAIG LEVEIN believes Alfredo Morelos risked causing crowd trouble with his goal celebration at Tynecastle last Sunday and should have been booked for ‘inciting’ the Hearts support. The Jambos boss came out firing yesterday, defending his right to criticise referee Bobby Madden’s performance in the 2-1 home loss to Rangers and branding as ‘nonsense’ a claim that he’d made a personal attack on the official. Levein, who vowed to fight any punishment for labelling Madden’s display ‘abysmal’, called out Morelos for mocking the home fans after scoring a winner which was later shown to be offside. Citing the Edinburgh derby in October — when Neil Lennon was hit with a coin and home keeper Zdenek Zlamal was assaulted by an away fan — Levein said he feared similar scenes when Morelos and fellow goalscorer Connor Goldson celebrated in front of the Hearts fans. ‘I told the fourth official about it and said: “You can’t let them do that”. Particularly after what has happened here recently,’ said Levein. ‘They said they’d have a word. ‘I see players being booked for that all the time, so I don’t understand why it wasn’t a yellow card. It should be a booking for inciting the fans.’ Levein insisted he would be ‘very surprised’ if the SFA charged him over his criticism of Madden, in which he claimed Hearts had been competing against ‘12 men’. He argued that Hibs counterpart Lennon had escaped punishment for using the same words when complaining about a ref following a recent game against Celtic. Meanwhile, Tommy Wright received the Ladbrokes Manager of the Month award for November yesterday and will celebrate a perfect 250th game in charge of St Johnstone if his team can leapfrog Hearts into fourth place with victory over them in Perth tonight.