ALEX’S ANGLE: REF OFF, DEREK

AMONG my multitude of failings is the inability to lip-read.

That skill would have been particularly helpful when Derek McInnes decided to take his new brown brogues for a test drive across the Tannadice pitch as he made a beeline for referee Nick Walsh in the immediate aftermath of the Ibrox side’s 1-1 draw with Dundee United the other night.

The latest Govan guru was clearly unhappy at the performance of the match official and it looked as though he was about to deliver some erudite comments to the man with the whistle in his dire necessity to emphasise the reason for his discomfiture.

What had irked McInnes to the extent of propelling him along the path of apoplexy?

MAKING A POINT…referee Nick Walsh reacts to the confrontational Derek McInnes.

Without donning my Sherlock Holmes deerstalker, I hazarded a guess that the recently-installed gaffer was not at all satisfied that his team had dropped two points on his maiden voyage.

It was his hand on the tiller as his new-look line-up, with four of his eight summer signings making their competitive debuts, headed straight for the Tayside rocks.

It’s the fourth successive season the Light Blues have failed at the first hurdle in the Premiership marathon, so the club are surely used to the unremarkable situation by now.

I’m guessing the 55-year-old soccer sage wasn’t entirely satisfied that the visitors had not been awarded a penalty-kick in the fading moments of a fairly scrappy confrontation.

Mohamed Diomande went down theatrically after a challenge from Emmanuel Agyei and Walsh, quite correctly as slow motion Sky footage endorsed, signalled a goal-kick.

Without casting aspersions on the Ivory Coast midfielder, it does seem he has a fondness for embracing the turf whenever an opportunity arises.

HEY, REF…Derek McInnes appeals for a late penalty-kick at Tannadice.

Seagulls flying overhead and dogs in the street knew he was about to take the plunge when he heard the rapid bootsteps of the pursuing United defender preparing to put in a tackle.

Agyei duly obliged with an interception timed to perfection to knock the ball against Diomande from whom it ricocheted out of play.

As we have now come to expect, the referee’s decision was met by much arm-waving and looks of disbelief by the grounded performer while his manager joined in the histrionics on the touchline.

It could have been choreographed and set to music.

If Walsh had bought the dive and awarded the penalty-kick, the decision would have been, in the vernacular of McInnes, “disgusting”.

At the final shrill of the whistle, a visibly-agitated McInnes, with a full head of steam, zeroed in on his prey as he had the urgent desire to make his feelings known to the ref.

With the greatest of irony, the manager should have been nowhere near the pitch that evening. He had been hit by a three-match SFA touchline ban and should have been among the patrons in the stand if it hadn’t been for a waste-of-time appeal by the club.

MAN ON A MISSION…Derek McInnes heads for a confrontation with ref Nick Walsh.

With the suspension stalled during the appeal process, Wee Derek was free to scuttle towards Walsh with the intention of a frank exchange of views.

What was said in that moment between referee and manager we will never know.

Remiscent of a headmaster dismissing a naughty schoolboy, Walsh was having none of it and waved McInnes away.

At the postmatch conference, the team chief admitted his confrontational error and said: “I shouldn’t have approached him on the pitch. I should have just approached him in the referee’s room which I did do.”

Could the pressure of managing his boyhood idols be getting to Wee Derek after just one game?

Surely not, dear reader. He is fond of informing everyone he has been a manager for 19 years with the accumulated experience that goes with such a time span.

During that extended period in the dug-out, McInnes has lifted one major honour, the League Cup with Aberdeen in 2013/14.

That trophy ‘haul’ is just one fewer than Martin O’Neill picked up at Celtic last season.