Derek Johnstone today tore into Kallum Higginbotham for branding Rangers star James Tavernier an attention seeker in the angry fallout over the Kilmarnock player’s red card in last weekend’s cup clash at Ibrox.

Higginbotham claimed Tavernier had milked the incident by posting pictures of his injured knee on Twitter.

And, in an interview with SportTimes this week, the former Partick Thistle man said the online snaps had scuppered his chances of appealing referee Bobby Madden’s decision.

But Ibrox legend DJ insists it is incredible that Higginbotham should even consider protesting his innocence and branded the challenge as ‘stupid’ and a ‘rush of blood to the head’.

“I am astonished,” he said. “If you watch the incident, Higginbotham started with his foot three feet off the ground, showing his studs as he was running into the player. Even if he’d missed Tavernier, he would

still have deserved a red card because the intent was there. I could not believe it when he accused Tavernier of being attention-seeking.

“Tavernier could have been badly injured had there been a different connection.

The studs were there on his knee. It was a horrendous challenge.

“For him to say the referee was harsh is absolutely unbelievable. You cannot be making tackles like that.

Higginbotham was given his marching orders by referee Bobby Madden for a high challenge late in the game and was angered when Tavernier posted an image of cuts on his knee on Twitter alongside the message ‘red card or not’.

However, Johnstone insists the referee called it right.

He said: “It is a red card every single day of the week. I listened to Terry Butcher saying that he didn’t think it was a sending-off.

“He said something along the lines of it being looked upon as a great tackle in his day.

“We could say that about a lot of things that went on back in our day, but the game has changed.

“Higginbotham made the challenge in the 89th minute on the halfway line. How stupid is that in the first place?

It was a rush of blood to the head.

“I don’t think he meant to hurt anyone, but you are going to find yourself sitting in the stand more often than the bench if you are making tackles like that.”

Johnstone also insists that Tavernier should not be criticised for putting a photograph of the stud marks inflicted on social media.

“There are players using Twitter at half-time these days,” he said. “That is just the way of the world nowadays.

“Tavernier has probably listened to people telling him that they didn’t think it was a red card and he’s thought to himself: ‘I’ll show you’.

“This is just the way football has gone. There are no excuses. Tavernier is not an attention-seeker. He is on Twitter like 90 per cent of young footballers and is no different from anyone else.”