A double from Celtic forward Kyogo Furuhashi put the holders 2-0 up and while Rangers responded through Alfredo Morelos on 64 minutes, Beale’s men were unable to find a leveller. It was the first time that Rangers have lost since the 42-year-old was appointed as manager back in December and while there were no complaints about the outcome, Beale – who brought his team into a huddle at full time to address all the players – could not hide his disappointment at certain aspects of his team’s performance.

"We started the game really poorly,” said Beale. “There’s no complaints with the overall result. We found ourselves 2-0 down, but we go and score and show a lot of character and resilience to try and push the game. But I was expecting more, from the team, from myself, from the day, so it's disappointing. We played against a very good opponent today and I thought they were very good in the game. So partly the reason why we didn't perform as well as we would have liked was Celtic were good as well, so fair dues on that.”

When asked what was his message to his players was just after the defeat on the pitch, Beale revealed: “Suck it up. It’s not nice, but on the day we didn’t come to the game until the second half in my opinion, so no qualms. On the day we lost the game and it’s not nice, so suck it up, get on board. You have to look at yourself in the mirror every day and that’s your biggest opponent. Are you being honest with that person? Are we working hard enough? Is the work we’re doing good enough? These are the days that we are judged on. We have to win the other games, but on these days this is when judgement day comes and we get it. We take it on. So that was what we spoke about in that brief moment there. I didn’t want anyone making any false opinions in their mind. We lost the game.”

Beale said he had no qualms with Celtic's victory over their rivals.

Beale refused, however, to make any knee-jerk reactions to his first taste of defeat as Rangers manager but did concede that work will need to be done to “revamp” his team and sort out the futures of certain players. “Revamp is a better word than rebuild,” he said. “Look, we’ve had a lot of injury problems this season. Even going into this game this week we’ve had a lot of uncertainty. We need to get over that and make sure people are fit and healthy. We need players available to make it a strong squad. It’s also important we recruit and work out one or two futures. But I think we will come back stronger. So I don’t think we should get too carried away.

“We lost today and it’s the end of the world in terms of today. But tomorrow we wake up and the job is just as big as it was regardless of whether we won this game or not. It’s important we bite down on the gum-shield and take our medicine. It doesn’t taste too nice right now but hen I look at the team, with the promise of Malik Tillman and with [Nicolas] Raskin and with [Todd] Cantwell, there is enough for me to be super optimistic about the future.

“Is it going to be plain sailing? Of course it isn’t. But would everything be rosy if we’d have won this cup final? No, we would still have had that work to do. It’s my job to do that tomorrow and I don’t mind being judged on that. But at this moment in time it’s probably not the right time for me to be going on about the greater future. It’s more, okay, what didn’t go right today in this fixture and what do we have to do to to fix it against Celtic? Because against everybody else it seems to have been fine so far.”

Michael Beale reveals what was said in Rangers pitch huddle at full time after Celtic defeat