THE rather robust style adopted by Motherwell this season is earning them plenty of success, if not a great deal of admiration from rival teams and managers, so when Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers offered his thoughts yesterday on the challenge that now awaits his side in the Betfred Cup final, the aggressive nature of Stephen Robinson’s side was always going to figure highly in the conversation.
Rodgers, unlike many from the blue half of Glasgow following the bruising defeat suffered by Rangers at the hands of the Steelmen in Sunday’s semi-final, insists that he doesn’t have a problem with their physical approach, backing his men to cope with whatever is thrown at them in their Hampden showdown at the end of November.
He has called though for strong refereeing, displaying authority and control, to protect his players when that hell-for-leather style creeps over the boundaries of legality, as it did so unchecked on numerous occasions at the weekend.
Motherwell forward Ryan Bowman, who was booked for an elbow on Rangers centre-back Fabio Cardoso early in the game but escaped a second caution for a similar offence in the second half, is someone in particular who has come to the attention of Rodgers before.
“It was the same player who tackled Kieran (Tierney) last season,” said Rodgers. “It’s authority. As an official, you can’t be affected in any way. You have to be concise.and you need to be clear in your judgement.
“There is retrospective action available in Scotland, so in situations like this you have to look at it.
“The centre half (Cardoso) came off the pitch on Sunday – Christ, if he’d been shot, he wouldn’t have looked worse. It was unbelievable.
“I don’t know what happened with (Louis) Moult [when he was elbowed by Cardoso] but that’s down to control as well. If, anywhere in the world, you do anything like that, then you’re off straight away.
“There was an incident where Bruno Alves didn’t even get spoken to. The referee was four yards away. That shows officials were affected.
“It’s the welfare of players you are looking at. How that game on Sunday ended up with 11 against 11, I will never know.”
Rodgers, despite his misgivings over some Motherwell challenges, praised countryman Stephen Robinson for the job he has done at Fir Park since taking over, and admits he may have to look at tweaking his own approach to deal with the threat that they pose.
“Listen, you want your team to be aggressive, to be super-competitive,” he said. “But that was beyond it on Sunday.
“You don’t want to take the aggression out of the game – we play an aggressive game with how we run, how we press and how we work. And Stephen has done a great job there.
“He kept them up and you can see the spirit of his team is strong, boys are fighting – which is great – and then they have the class act up front who has the ability to score out of nothing; Moult’s record proves that.
“That’s their style; get it up to the front two as directly as possible, challenge, run and I’ve absolutely no problem with that.
“But referees obviously need to know that, in that type of game, when there are constant physical challenges, they have to be really firm.
“All you can ask when teams are physical like that is that referees do their duty and protect players.”
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