Rangers FC take on FC Shkupi in the second leg of the Europa League qualifiers on Tuesday evening and the fans will be hoping to see a smooth victory.
The Gers won the first leg of the qualifiers last week 2-0 thanks to goals from James Murphy and an injury-time penalty from James Tavernier.
The penalty for the Gers came in injury time of the match and the Shkupi players were absolutely furious with the decision with most of them almost jumping into the referee for the night – Christian Dingert.
Now as the officials for the second leg have been announced, the Light Blues fans are thinking that there a huge possibility that their team might suffer the same fate on Tuesday.
The second leg will be played out at the Philip II Arena in Skopje, Macedonia and FC Shkupi are expected to throw the kitchen sink at Steven Gerrard’s team.
And in such a scenario there is a huge possibility that the match may see some heated moments ultimately requiring the intervention of the referee.
And this is where the Gers fans are a bit worried since the referee for the game is Halil Umut Meler from Turkey.
Melet is one of the more inexperienced officials in the European panel and the Shkupi vs Rangers match will be only his second European game in charge.
Halil Umut Meler has managed 121 games in his official career but most of them have been in the Super Lig – the first tier of Turkish football.
Apart from the one Europa League game, Halil’s all the other European games have either been Youth Leagues or U-21’s or U-19 games.
And since this announcement, a lot of Rangers fans have voiced their concern on social media whether such an inexperienced European referee will be able to handle such an important tie.
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