Giovanni Van Bronckhorst has thrown his weight behind Leon Balogun over his 28th red in Rangers’ 3-1 away win over Motherwell.
The Dutchman however, praised his players for “digging deep” to secure an important victory at Fir Park.
Before the half-hour mark of the game the encounter took a twist when Balogun saw red for his challenge on Dean Cornelius in front of Fir Park’s main stand.
The Nigerian’s challenge was clumsy with Motherwell’s Juahni Ojala guilty of a similar tackle on Wright minutes later with referee Nick Walsh only brandishing a yellow card from his pocket.
The manager gave his thoughts on the red card decision after Balogun’s challenge. “Balogun wanted to win the tackle, but in these circumstances the margins are very little so the ref decided to give the red card and we had to respect that, move on and make sure we had the focus on the minutes that we had to play after that sending off.
“Of course, we conceded the goal but I think we changed the game in the second half.
“We know with Sakala and Scott up front you can always cause problems for a defence and, of course, we saw that with the run of Sakala and a good shot from Scott [for the second goal].
“The speed from Fashion also wins the penalty and it gives us the two goals which gave us the win.
“So we could change some players today and everyone who came in did very well and it is a very big win for us.”
Van Bronckhorst, speaking post-match to RangersTV, said: “I’m very proud. We started the game well but the red card changed the momentum for us.”