Clement wants talks with refs – but away from the heat of battle
Philippe Clement wants regular meetings with referees to foster a better understanding between officials and managers.
The Rangers boss was speaking the day after 13 decisions were deemed wrong by the Scottish Football Association’s VAR independent review panel during the second round of cinch Premiership fixtures – a steep rise from the three errors reported from the opening round of games.
The Belgian was not too concerned about the apparent mistakes made by officials so far this season ahead of the trip to St Johnstone tomorrow but outlined his hopes for the future.
Clement, who has picked up three yellow cards since taking over the Ibrox hot seat in October, the most recent in the 3-1 win over Ross County at Ibrox on Wednesday night which took his side level on points with leaders Celtic, believes that more dialogue away from the“tension”ofmatcheswould help the game in general.
“Transparency is good and if faults are made there is communication and we can learn lessons from that,” said the former Genk, Club Brugge and Monaco boss, who revealed Rabbi Matondo will miss this weekend’s game with a small muscle injury. “It is the same for me if I make mistakes.
“I think it very important for the game of football that there
is transparency and communication and I think it is important that there can be more communication between referees and managers a few times a season, say two or three times a season, outside of the games.
“We did it in Belgium once or twice and it was really interesting because it is a different relationship within the games. There is always a lot of tension and everybody is really focused on their job.
“But I think it is important to have good communications and see each other in a different way sometimes and I think
it can be interesting for Scottish football. It can be interesting to have good discussions about the game of football, the rules and the things that happen in the months before, discussions in a good way, that there is no misunderstanding or less misunderstanding and that everybody can have their view on things and with this we can have a better product.
“And I mean both sides; managers can talk about things that happened in games that we didn’t understand because we need to explain to our players why decisions are made and also the referees can talk
about the actions in the games and also maybe about the behaviour of managers.
“I was also a bit too temperamental in the last game and I kicked away a bottle of water and I got a yellow card which I understood afterwards. If we can have open discussions, we as managers can learn, me in the first instance.”
As well as Matondo, Kemar Roofe, Danilo (knee), Kieran Dowell and Abdallah Sima (thigh) all remain sidelined. However, midfielder Dujon Sterling returns from a twogame ban and defender Leon Balogun will be available for the game against Saints, wearing a mask to protect a facial injury.