Dejected Rangers manager Michael Beale reveals honest words with players and gives worrying update on injured duo
A 24th-minute goal from Cyriel Dessers gave them a narrow victory over the Steelmen at Ibrox and moved them to third place in the Premiership, but the boos that greeted the full-time whistle from some of the supporters inside the stadium told its own story, with Rangers well below the expectations demanded of them and left clinging on at the end as the visitors pushed for an equaliser. A clearly dispirited and angry Beale was honest in his assessment of the display, labelling some of the play “unacceptable”.
“From the first minute onwards I was unhappy with the team today,” said Beale. “The unforced errors with the ball were unacceptable for players playing here. That performance today was a really poor one.
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Hide Ad“It was a good goal, but outside of that some of our play was so poor against a team which was in a good place and is well-organised and came here with a plan. They executed their plan better than us because we constantly turned the ball over and left ourselves vulnerable.
"I’m looking for more from this group of players, they know that. I take no comfort from winning that game of football today. I don’t take one bit of comfort from that, it wasn’t a game I enjoyed at all. I don’t think the players enjoyed it either. It’s a complete backward step after a forward step on Thursday [when beating Real Betis 1-0].
When asked if he was angry with the players afterwards, Beale responded: “We’ve had honest words, yes.”
Beale’s mood was not helped by further injuries to his squad. Tom Lawrence was absent and won’t play again until mid-October, while Rabbi Matondo was taken off in the first time and the manager admitted “it doesn’t look like a good one”.
When asked to expand on the condition of both players, Beale continued: “Tom thought he had cramp and wanted to continue in the game [against Betis] but we didn’t take a risk. The next day he woke up and couldn’t walk so he has gone for a scan. He won’t play this side of the international duty. He has a problem with a calf. The international duty sounds like it’s longer because that is a two week break but he will return with Todd [Cantwell] and Nico [Raskin] and Danilo. Kieran [Dowell] might be back in the middle of the week to play at the weekend but obviously he’s lacking a bit of fitness.
“Rabbi today we think that might be a bad one. He’s taken a blow on the outside of his knee. That’s the information I was given. [Abdallah] Sima and [Kemar] Roofe came into today’s game with niggles and we need them for Wednesday [against Livingston in the Viaplay Cup quarter-final]. So the reality is that we had on the pitch what we had and we had to do something to get a result today, because we weren’t very good. I will leave it there with that.”