Scottish football rocked by fresh refereeing drama as John McGinn left aghast by 'worst decision I've seen'

Motherwell were in front at half-time courtesy of Liam Gordon’s first goal for the club but Killie hit back through Liam Polworth. However, the main talking point came on 78 minutes as Danny Armstrong and Casey clashed.

Armstrong appeared to goad the Motherwell defender into grabbing his shirt near his neck and referee Chris Graham did not hesitate to brandish a red card. VAR got involved – presumably due to the harsh nature of the dismissal – but Graham stuck by his original decision after being called over to the pitchside monitor.

The decision even provoked a response from Scotland midfielder John McGinn who posted on X: “Can't watch that game anymore. Worst decision I've ever seen in my puff.”

The incident comes amid the fallout from Sunday’s League Cup final which saw SFA head of referees Willie Collum publicly admit that an “unacceptable” error was made in failing to award Rangers a crucial penalty during their defeat to Celtic at Hampden.

Irate Well boss Stuart Kettlewell told BBC Scotland: "Questionable is an understatement. I always try and be honest. I am sick and fed up of it. I’ve been told there’s been three key errors in our last five games. I try to move on and hope better times are ahead then it come to tonight and it’s by far the worst of them all. It’s quite incredible.

"Him being sent to the monitor suggests he’s got it wrong. I’ve been given the heads up from Kilmarnock’s bench that this is going to be overturned. And the ref watches it several times and thinks that he’s got it right. I’m concerned for the game in this country if we’re deeming that type of thing a red card. We want it to get better. Decisions like that are not moving it forward."

Kilmarnock manager Derek McInnes agreed with his counterpart Kettlewell and admitted he expected Graham to overturn his decision to send off Casey.

“I actually don’t think there was enough in the red card incident for it to stand,” McInnes said. “We were actually getting ready for Casey to come back on from what we saw on our monitor.

“The referee then maintained it was a red card, but I can think of three or four refs off the top of my head who would have dealt with it differently because of talking to the players.”