Jack Ross: No point in Hibs looking for excuses - but Rangers man should have seen red

While Jack Ross refused to use Alfredo Morelos’ lucky escape as an excuse for losing 1-0 against Rangers, he did not shirk away from calling out the Rangers striker’s unsavoury first-half stamp, insisting it was a red card offence.

Rangers' Alfredo Morelos (left) holds off Hibernian's Ryan Porteous during Rangers' league win over Hibs at Easter Road. Photo by Craig Williamson / SNS Group

The Ibrox goalscorer evaded punishment for the naughty little dig, with officials apparently missing him stomping on the grounded Ryan Porteous after he was judged to have barged the Hibs defender.

“It’s a red card, isn’t it?” said Ross. “You can ask me and I don’t think my opinion is going to be different to every single person here and every single person who watched it.

“It’s quite an easy one to say it should be a red card but obviously it’s been missed by the match officials.

“I wouldn’t use it as an excuse for how we lost the goal. We defended brilliantly throughout the game and that was one lapse for us. We should have defended the goal better, irrespective of who scores it.

“I’m not going to point to that as an excuse for conceding but I would point to the fact that he shouldn’t have been on the pitch. I think that’s plain for everyone to see.”

After the anger expressed in the wake of Saturday’s Betfred Cup defeat, Ross was happier with his side’s showing against the league leaders.

“Performance-wise I was pleased with what the players gave me. The most disappointing period of the game was when we conceded at the start of the second half. But apart from that we played well against a good team. Our reaction was good.”

But, their fifth defeat in the last seven games has given them cause to start looking over their shoulder as Livingston close in.

“We’ve put ourselves in a good position but we need to get back to winning games regularly. We’ve had a strange fixture list where we’ve played Ranges twice and Celtic away in the last six games so we've got a period coming up where we believe that if we produce that type of performance, we can get back to scoring goals regularly and winning games.”

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