John Lundstram’s final failures

After three lucrative years it seems that John Lundstram is about to depart Scottish football.

At Hampden he was sent on to replace Nicky Raskin in the fourth minute of stoppage time, If Phil Clement was looking for an equalising goal it was a very strange choice to make.

Starting 33 SPFL matches this season the Scary Scouser had a goal contribution of -1, no goals or assists but one memorable own goal against Celtic a fortnight earlier, shortly before he was sent off for a brutal attack on Alistair Johnston.

Ryan Jack and Kieran Dowell were left unused on the bench as Clement was sent on for reasons that only Clement will know.

Almost as soon as Lundstram got on the park he tried to elbow Daizen Maeda in the head, failing to hit the target after Mohamed Diomande had twice kicked out at the Celtic striker.

John Beaton paused the game for a VAR review, spent more than a minute reviewing the incidents and decided to play on.

There was one more opportunity for Lundstram to inflict serious injury on an opponents, beyond the eight minutes of stoppage time it was looking fairly obvious that there wasn’t going to be a dramatic equaliser.

Seeing Matt O’Riley on the touchline Lundstram opted to race in from behind to inflict Johnston-like damage on the Celtic midfielder.

Any claim that he was looking to play the ball fails to stack up since all that would have happened would have been Celtic getting awarded a throw-in.

Fortunately O’Riley was still switched on enough to anticipate the lunge, he skipped away from it, as did Nick Walsh and Beaton who both decided to take no further action.

For reasons that only their Recruitment Department could justify Trabzonspor are widely reported to be well down the line to offering Lundstram a three year contract, signing as a free agent.

With Ryan Kent flopping in Turkish football it is difficult to make any case for justifying a move for the Scary Scouser who turned 30 in February.

Six SPFL goals over 85 starts and 15 substitute appearances is the sort of return that you’d expect from a full-back that doesn’t take penalties.

Playing for the team that has finished as runners-up three times a midfielder would be expected to score 8-10 goals per season.

Turkish referees are likely to be much less sympathetic to Lundstram than those selected by Crawford Allan.