BBC Sport pundit Tam McManus has said he wouldn’t be surprised to never see striker Umar Sadiq in a Rangers shirt again after he was booked for diving in the 1-0 defeat to Aberdeen on Sunday.
The 21-year-old had the chance to draw Steven Gerrard’s side level late on after rounding Dons goalkeeper Joe Lewis, but chose to go down under minimal contact from Michael Devlin and was shown a yellow card for simulation.
McManus was less than pleased with the frontman: “Why is he diving it’s a tap in? Incredible,” he said on his personal Twitter account.
“Don’t think you will see Sadiq ever again in a Rangers shirt after today unless he bags a goal late.”
https://twitter.com/The_Tman10/status/1056610888453627905
OPINION
It’s easy to see where McManus is coming from, here. There was absolutely no need for Sadiq to go down in that situation. He had an open goal to aim for if he had just kept his feet. It’s not like he was taken out by a slide tackle. No, there was slight contact on his arm from Devlin, that’s it. To turn down a golden goalscoring chance like that to try and deceive the referee into winning a penalty is simply baffling. Why he did it no one knows, and Gerrard will surely have been furious with him after the game. The Roma loanee was given a rare chance up front, with neither Alfredo Morelos or Kyle Lafferty making the squad, and this was exactly the sort of incident he should have been looking to avoid. Whether McManus’s premonition that Sadiq will never play for the club again comes true or not remains to be seen, but he’s certainly done a lot of damage to his career in Glasgow today. The frontman needs to look himself in the mirror when he gets home because that dive was embarrassing.