Rangers boss Philippe Clement demands more help from SPFL over fixture scheduling as he blasts Hibs penalty decision

RANGERS celebrated their return to Ibrox with a hard-fought 1-0 win over Hibs this afternoon.

But boss Philippe Clement wasn’t all happy in his post-match interview.

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Jack Butland saved a penalty from Mykola Kukharevych after John Souttar was penalised for a handball, leaving Clement fuming.

He said: “My question is why is that a penalty?

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“You have a player who goes into a duel, turns himself and puts his leg up to go to the ball, so he’s wide.

“At that moment, he sees the other one who gets the contact, he makes himself smaller to put his arm in front of him and then the ball touches him and his arm goes up in that way.

“In that short distance, I’ve seen situations in the last couple of weeks where there were people with their arm out of their body and no penalty.

“It was discussed before this season not to give easy penalties for short distance in those moments, so for me, it’s not a penalty.

“He cannot put his elbow against his body when you turn yourself and you go with your leg up.

“You cannot put your arm somewhere inside your body, so he makes himself smaller to not be coming in like that.

“As a player, you cannot do more and it’s from one-and-a-half meters that this ball comes.

“So no, I think it was really clear in the discussion with managers and referee department that these situations were not penalties.

“So yeah, I expect that conclusion will be made during the week, but it can happen, it’s always human decisions.”

Clement also gave his general view on the game, including his say on the 12pm Sunday kickoff time on a weekend between two Europa League games.

He said: “In a lot of countries now in the last couple of years, you look at matches and when they are played, which matches all over Europe, or even situations where teams don’t have to play when they have to play Europe like we had with Kiev for example. 

“So you play today at 12 o’clock after a European trip where you come home around 2am back at Auchenhowie, so then you need to drive back home so players are asleep if they are lucky around 4. 

“You have the next day training, you already lost one night of sleep, you have one night of sleep and this one is also a short one because you need to wake up really early to be ready for the game.

“So yes, I saw a few players or several players or almost everybody who played on Thursday and even the guys who didn’t play that they were less fresh than in the last couple of weeks, it’s normal. 

“We spoke about that already last season, and of course I’m not the guy who has contact with the SPFL. 

“I don’t know the people there, so there are other people in the club who talked about that last couple of months, but at the end it’s you guys or the television who decides apparently. 

“But it’s something to think about if you want to have a good quality product that you think about those things also, because it’s a massive difference to sleep longer today and have a 3 or 5 o’clock kick-off.”

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