Michael Beale insists a Rangers win would have been a fair result as he says his side have shown they can compete with the best after only being denied victory over Celtic by a late Kyogo leveller in the Ne’erday derby at Ibrox.
The Light Blues boss reckons it’s a sign of how far they’ve come in the short space of time under the Londoner that they were disappointed not to get the victory against the Hoops as they remain nine points behind their rivals.
It’s now four wins and a draw under Beale after a Ryan Kent goal and James Tavernier penalty saw them take the lead following Daizen Maeda’s early opener for the visitors. And Beale told Sky Sports: “We were excellent in the second half and it would have been fair if we’d won the game so we’re a little bit disappointed.
“I’ve got more answers and I’ve given them a few things we need to do moving forward. We certainly have more players in our squad who will come back and help the starting team and we’ll get fitter and stronger as we go. The big thing is we’ve only been back together a few weeks and we’re already at a level where we can compete with the team we need to compete with. Now we have to show consistency in all the other games. We’re no further away than we were four or five weeks ago. We’d like to be three points closer but we just need to keep improving.
“The two goals for us are poor goals to give away, certainly the one early in the game. We actually started the game quite well and then gave a goal away and it took us 10 or 15 minutes to find ourselves again and I didn’t really want the half time whistle. We had two big chances with Alfredo with headers and Ryan Kent hit the post.
“I was thinking at half time we just needed to show a little bit more belief because I didn’t think there was much in the game other than that. We showed that at the start of the second half and got ourselves 2-1 in front. We were in control of the game. They hadn’t been near Allan and we had a big chance to go 3-1 up with Malik and we didn’t take it and the second goal they score was really poor from us. We sat deep and had three or four chances to clear it so I’m disappointed. I saw a lot of good things today, a lot of players committed to the cause.”
