Rangers fans are hoping for big things in the 2024/25 campaign from gaffer Philippe Clement given the progress that we made under him after he replaced former manager Michael Beale in October of last year.
With nine new faces through the doors at Ibrox given our summer transfer window work so far, it was always likely that we would need a few weeks of the season proper before players really began to gel and find their feet at the club, and based on Sportytrader’s soccer prediction, sadly our start to life this year has been as inconsistent as many feared we might be.
We opened our Scottish Premiership campaign with a draw against Hearts, before picking up a 2-1 win over Motherwell, but very disappointingly our Champions League hopes are over for another year (with the financial benefits that would naturally bring) as we went down 3-1 on aggregate to Dynamo Kyiv and now drop into the Europa League.
The defeat was even more frustrating for fans given the manner of the loss, and whilst there will be those in the Gers faithful who feel that there was far more to the defeat than Jefte’s double booking given the overall performance – few could deny that it obviously played a major part in the outcome as we had to play almost the entire second half down to ten men.
The 20 year old Brazilian left back was making his first start for Clement after our summer capture of him from Fluminense, and there was reasonable confidence that we would book the play off place we all dearly wanted against RB Salzburg, but it just was not to be.
Having jumped for a header, having already received an earlier yellow card, Marco Guida, the referee, bizarrely felt that he must have deliberately led with his elbow it seems. Now, his arm did make contact but it was a ‘nothing burger’ and it is the kind of aerial challenge you see multiple times in every game of football that takes place.
But instead of showing a straight red for dangerous play and conduct, he simply showed a second yellow – which even though it resulted in him being sent from the field of play with a red card, it could not be reviewed by the Video Assistant Referee technology and team as they cannot overturn yellow cards.
The game was goalless at the point and we were arguably on top, and probably should have already tipped the game in our favour, but history now records what happened in the remaining 40 odd minutes of the game, as the momentum turned on that decision.
The reaction from the usual set of football pundits is actually quite telling here, as although there are a few who have predictably swam against the tide, the vast majority seem to be fully on board with the fact that it was an incredibly harsh decision that fell against us, and most do not even seem to understand how it could even have been deemed a foul by the man in charge, let alone worthy of a sanction and a card.
We all know referees can get things wrong, they are human, and the game is fast and with pace, and we all know ourselves a gut response to an incident on the pitch has us all screaming ‘red’ or ‘get up he never touched you’ and is there one person amongst us who has never changed their mind with the benefit of a single replay?
Again it is just another example of VAR being absolutely unfit for purpose. Most people would believe that if the referee could have reviewed it, he would have probably changed his mind, but he never had that opportunity.
Even former referees that have defended Guida’s decision seem to be at pains to not say he was actually correct – that alone speaks volumes to his mistake, and what is the point of all those cameras if a Ref cannot say ‘I want to watch that again’.
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