Gerrard to watch if Power will be out after clash

Posted Sunday, February 10, 2019 by PA

Rangers manager Steven Gerrard admitted he would watch with interest whether any retrospective action results from their goalless William Hill Scottish Cup tie at Kilmarnock following Alan Power’s high challenge on Ryan Jack.

Referee Alan Muir had a perfect view of the first-half incident and booked the Kilmarnock midfielder after Power’s studs flew into the side of Jack’s head as the Rangers midfielder went up for a header.

But after seeing his goalkeeper, Allan McGregor, charged over a challenge on Aberdeen’s Lewis Ferguson and top goalscorer Alfredo Morelos losing an appeal against his latest red card, Gerrard is taking note of Scottish Football Association compliance officer Clare Whyte’s next move.

When asked whether Kilmarnock should have gone down to 10 men, Gerrard said: “No comment. But I’ll be interested to see if there’s a citing. I don’t know who points the citings out but I’ll be interested to see what happens.”

On his own club’s dealings with the SFA disciplinary process, Gerrard said: I just hope that moving forward we can find some consistency, that’s all I can say really.

“Alfredo’s done, he’ll serve his punishment. I’m told he will be back for the replay and I’m sure he will be really, really looking forward to that game, and it will be great to have him available again.

“In terms of McGregor, you know what we are doing with that one (challenging a two-match ban).”

Rangers had the best of the chances in the fifth-round tie. James Tavernier saw a 15th-minute penalty saved by Daniel Bachmann following Kirk Broadfoot’s handball, and Jermain Defoe missed a glorious late opportunity after some rare slackness from the hosts.

“I thought it was a decent game considering there were no goals,” Gerrard said. “I’m satisfied with our performance, I’m satisfied with our clean sheet.

“We came here to get the job done, unfortunately we couldn’t do that.

“When I analyse the game, I think we lacked a little bit in the final third maybe. Jermain had that one chance at the end but I’d like us to provide a little bit more invention.

“But defensively we were really, really strong. Besides a little goalmouth scramble, we were perfect.”

Power did go off early in the 58th minute after a clash of heads with Ross McCrorie and Rangers dominated after the Irish midfielder was replaced by striker Kris Boyd.

Killie boss Steve Clarke, who had no “big complaints” about the penalty, said: “I took that opportunity to go 4-4-2. We wanted to win it here and I put Kris on, went two up front.

“But at that time Rangers had a better grip on the game than we did. I don’t think it was so much to do with the formation.

“Both teams probably finished a little bit leggy after their exertions in midweek. We certainly seemed to suffer a little bit more from that than Rangers.

“I actually lost Aaron Tshibola in the warm-up, he felt his thigh go. That could be another reason why we didn’t change a third midfield player.”

Meanwhile, the two managers played down their midweek spat, which saw Gerrard accuse Clarke of a lack of class for trying to get Defoe banned for diving.

Gerrard said: “There’s nothing to straighten out really. I’ll go in now and have a beer with him and we’ll move on.”

Clarke, a former Liverpool coach of Gerrard’s, said: “I’ve just bumped into him going down the stairs. We will go and have a little chat, like I do with all the managers that come here.

“There’s no problems. It’s all part of the game, no worries at all with Steven. We’ll have a good chat.”