Rangers midfielder John Lundstram has been criticised for not making a challenge after losing the ball in the side’s Premiership defeat this past weekend.
Football Scotland deputy editor Mark Hendry was reacting to the incident on Twitter following the game on Sunday and slammed Lundstram’s lack of commitment.
Sunday’s defeat leaves Rangers seven points off the Premiership summit and has ramped up the pressure on manager Giovanni van Bronckhorst, with the side also attaining the tag of being the Champions League’s poorest-performing club ever last week.
During the side’s defeat at McDiarmid Park, there was a moment in which Lundstram was running with the ball before it got away from him.
However, he could have made the effort to win it back from St Johnstone’s Adam Montgomery, but seemed to pull out of making any challenge and lost possession cheaply.
Hendry reacted online, writing: “If you did this at fives – and I have many times – you’d get a hammering. Really poor from Lundstram, who you’d expect would’ve thrown himself into that 50/50.”
TIF Thoughts on Lundstram’s efforts…
We think that Lundstram will be embarrassed when he looks back on the clips of him pulling out of the challenge, with the video seeming to display a lack of commitment and fight for the side.
The least you should expect from a professional footballer is to show full effort and commitment, so it’s understandable that Hendry was not the only one to express their frustration.
Therefore, we think that Lundstram will need to re-evaluate what to do in a similar instance next time and will be no doubt disappointed that his commitment has been questioned following the footage.