Dermot Gallagher insists Bobby Madden got it right in his decision to send off Nir Bitton - and reckons Shane Duffy was lucky not to see red too.
And the whistler also insisted Alfredo Morelos should have been booked for an early foul on Jeremie Frimpong but insisted Madden can't be criticised for not sending the Colombian off.
Morelos was later carded after a melee involving both sides after Duffy had chopped down Ryan Kent but Gallagher insists it's not evidence he should have been dismissed.
He believes if Morelos was booked then it could have stopped him getting involved in the later incident so it can't be suggested that it would have led to a red card.
But the former Premier League whistler rejected Neil Lennon's suggestion that Kristoffer Ajer was there to cover, and reckons Madden only didn't send Duffy off because of the earlier red card.
Bitton on Morelos
I watched this game live and I thought he’d get sent off. Once Morelos is past, he’ll go straight towards goal and the law says ‘Has he a goalscoring opportunity?’.
That means can he get a shot away at goal, and I would suggest he would get a shot away at goal long before Ajer gets across because he’s parallel and there’s a great distance between them.
It’s a challenge Bitton doesn’t need to make. Once you make a challenge like that you know it’s going to be a red card. I sometimes think a player should let him go and take a chance on the goalkeeper making a save or the player missing.
For me, it’s a red card.
Morelos on Frimpong
I think it's a yellow card but you can’t go that way round. When you’re on a yellow card and you make a challenge and don’t get sent off then you can say the referee hasn’t followed through. But he’s not on a yellow when he makes the second so it’s a different challenge, but when you see it, I think that’s a yellow card in itself.
Duffy on Kent
This is as high a tariff yellow card as you get. It must be bordering on red, not so much for the first leg but the fact he follows through. The ref has seen that, he’s just sent off Bitton, he needs to be assured that it really is pushed over the boundary but as it was right on it, he gave Shane Duffy the benefit of the doubt. As I said earlier, another day another referee that could have been a red card.
