Lee McCulloch has claimed that Allan McGregor was trying to ‘wriggle free’ when he kicked out at Kris Ajer.
The former Kilmarnock manager was fully on message yesterday as he provided excuses for everything Ibrox related during appearances with Sky Sports and Radio Scotland.
Progress has been made, it was a definite foul on Ryan Jack and a long journey back from Russia were all trotted out in a form of Sevco bingo to excuse being outplayed and outclassed by Celtic who were in crisis according to McCulloch’s old Ibrox buddy Kris Boyd.
Now McCulloch, known as elbows in his playing days, has taken things a step further by trying to excuse McGregor’s attack on Ajer.
Steven Gerrard even admitted that his goalkeeper was fortunate to get away with the attack but one apologist has now popped up to excuse the actions of the former Hull City keeper.
Writing in the Evening Times McCulloch explained:
I have played with Allan at Rangers and I know him well, and I can tell you now that there is no malice in Greegsy at all.
I genuinely don’t think that the compliance officer can look at the incident where he appeared to kick out at Ajer and charge the Rangers keeper, because the precedent has been set this season with the Alfredo Morelos incident at Aberdeen and the Steven Naismith incident for Hearts against Celtic.
For me, I don’t think what Allan did was anywhere near as bad as those two incidents, and they got batted down, so I would be staggered if anything comes of it. It’s a definite non-event in my book.
It may look worse than it actually is, and there is no way that he has used excessive force. I’m not making excuses for him, and you might argue that an experienced player should know better than to take any sort of risk like that in such an important game, but I think on balance that he was probably just trying to wriggle free from the incident.
The SFA Compliance Officer is expected to make a decision in the next 48 hours over whether to issue retrospective action.
