Connor Goldson has pleaded for protection from SPFL strikers and ignored the physical attacks that team-mate Alfredo Morelos dishes out on a weekly basis.
Steven MacLean of Hearts was booked during the first half of Hearts’ Betfred Cup semi-final defeat on Sunday then substituted before the break before he was sent off.
Morelos had a running battle with Christophe Berra throughout the match as he body-checked the defender at every opportunity with elbows flying knowing that John Beaton was never going to produce a card.
So far this season the Colombian has picked up one yellow card in domestic matches and four in the Europa League.
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Without any reference to his own team-mate Goldson told the Daily Record:
For Scottish football to improve the referees have to take action against the ridiculous challenges. Scottish football in general is quite physical and it takes the foreign boys a little bit of time to adjust to it. But the referees have to try to make sure people aren’t getting hurt.
It’s fine being physical because we’re all physical players and physical teams but they can’t get away with yellow cards for elbows and nasty tackles where they want to leave a mark just to show they’re the ones who are being aggressive and they’re up for it. But if teams want to do it then we keep accepting it and it’s our responsibility to get past that and play our own game.
Having played in England I feel it’s only in Scotland you get away with some of the stuff you do up here. You can make six or seven fouls in Scotland and not get a yellow card but those little fouls disrupt the whole rhythm of the game.
But in England or Europe if you make one or two of those fouls you get a yellow and can’t do it for the rest of the game. I played in the lower leagues in England. I learned as a young boy I had to be physical and get used to it.
Against Hearts I took a couple of sore ones and his (MacLean’s) gameplan was obviously to try to rough us up and be a bit aggressive but there’s a difference between being aggressive and going over the top and it showed with him getting taken off so early.
If he hadn’t already been on a yellow he’d have been booked for his next foul but the referee said he didn’t want to ruin a semi-final by sending him off for something so silly. He caught me inside a minute but it’s the same every week. The same happened at Ross County where the boy did the exact same thing.
On Thursday night a non-Scot will referee the Europa League tie against Porto, one more booking for Morelos will see him miss the away tie with Feyenoord through suspension.
