Sone Aluko has denied that he deliberately dived to earn a penalty against Dunfermline Athletic at Ibrox three weeks ago and has questioned the Scottish Football Association's appointment of a compliance officer who has no direct experience of playing professional football.
The Rangers winger served a two-match suspension after Vincent Lunny judged that the incident in the game at Ibrox, when Aluko went down after a challenge by Martin Hardie, should be referred to the SFA's fast-track tribunal. Aluko was offered a two-match suspension, but chose to appeal, and the tribunal rejected his plea.
The player insists he did not cheat, though, and was merely anticipating contact from Hardie. Aluko believes players are being wrongly judged, because they do not make a conscious decision in split-second incidents, and that the compliance officer would better understand such nuances had he played at a high level, although his role is to judge incidents from a legal point of view.
"If you don't play, you won't know what has gone through [a player's] head," he said. "You get used to expecting knocks or kicks. As soon as you feel something, you think 'that's what I was waiting for'. But the compliance officer, with all due respect, hasn't played football. So, he's not going to see it that way.
"It's good that the SFA are looking into things like that but it would help if the Compliance Officer had played football. But then he would get accusations that he was a Celtic fan, a Rangers fan, or this or that. So he is always going to be criticised."
Aluko believes his style of play will lead to challenges in and around the box. He won six penalties for Aberdeen last term, but insists he had never before been accused of diving. He can't change his approach to the game, but his concern is that the judgment of referees might be swayed by a player having been branded a diver, or by the knowledge that their decisions are now under even greater scrutiny.
"The new system has put a bit of pressure on referees," Aluko added. "The referee's decision has always been final, but that's not the case any more. It could change their minds a little bit. I hope they stay strong and make the decisions they feel are right. Of course, I disagree with being labelled a diver.
"It's like whether it is a deliberate handball or not. it might just be a natural reaction. You've not thought, 'I'm going to cheat'."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article