Under- fire referee Mclean is moved down to championship match

Referee Steven Mclean will not take charge of a Scottish Premiership match this weekend, and has instead been handed the Scottish Championship derby between St Mirren and Greenock Morton.

Mclean’s demotion comes in the wake of criticism for the way he handled the Bet fred Cup semi final clash between R angers and Mother well on Sunday.

Questions were raised after M clean did not penalise Motherwell’ s Ryan Bowman following a clash that left Rangers defender Fabio Cardoso with a broken nose, and didn’t take action after Bruno Alves appeared to kick out at Louis Moult.

Alves has since been offered a two- match ban by the Scottish FA, but Mclean was in the firing line once more after he took charge of Partick Thistle’s visit to Hamilton last night.

Both managers felt they had decent penalty shouts, with Martin Canning suggesting Accies could even have got two spot- kicks.

Jags boss Alan Archibald claims that McLean“maybe shouldn’ t have taken the game”, telling The Sun: “I’m not battering Stevie but he had a big game on Sunday and when refs have games like that they just want to get through the next one and maybe shouldn’t be taking the game.

“He’s a good referee, but I think he just wanted to get through the game because I’m in disbelief after watching [ the penalty incident] back.”

Other refereeing appointments this weekend see Craig Thomson take charge of HeartsvR anger sat Murrayfield, Don Robertson is the man in the middle for Aberdeenv Ross County, Nick Walsh has Cel tic’ s home tie with Kilmarnock, Greg Aitken is at Dens Park for Dundee v Hamilton, Bobby Madden is in charge for Hibernian’s trip to Motherwell and John Beaton has been handed Partick Thistle’s match with St Johnstone.

Kevin Clancy, who refereed the Bet fred Cup semi-final between Hibs and Celtic, is also on Scottish Championship duty, and takes charge of Inverness Caledonian Thistle’s match with Dunfermline.