Rangers coach on the 'most one-sided' League Cup final defeat to Celtic and Ibrox's wow factor

Michael Beale (far left) is a key member of Steven Gerrard's coaching team. Picture: SNS

Rangers’ first-team coach Michael Beale the team are “moving forward” under Steven Gerrard.

The Ibrox side were second, 13 points behind Celtic, in the Scottish Premiership table and trailing Bayer Leverkusen in the last-16 of the Europa League prior to football’s postponement.

The side had already been knocked out of the Scottish Cup, while they had lost to Celtic in the Betfred Cup final, which Beale branded “the most one-sided final maybe in history”.

Despite the prospect of a second trophyless season at Rangers, the coach believes the players deserve a pat on the back and that the club have helped grow the interest in Scottish football.

“It has been a massive whirlwind,” Beale told Goal.com. “We have had unbelievable highs and now through a period where we haven’t been able to play our strongest team. The fact that people don’t realise is we have played 53 games this season which is more games than any team.

“The weight on our players is huge. That’s a reduction in training time and finding that consistency level is difficult. We need to find more competition for places for our best players.

“We have done extremely well but no one will pat us on the back because of the league that we are in.

“We are in a two-club battle domestically. We played very well in a cup final against Celtic and it was the most one-sided final maybe in history that a team loses.

“We are moving forward, we have young players people respect.

“We have lowered the average age and we are growing the interest in the Scottish league again.

“Still, we need more consistency like we have had in our big games. We need to find that level of performance that we have had over a 50-60 game season. We’ve made shortcuts, gains, got people excited and raised expectations.”

‘Rock star’

Beale is a key member of Gerrard’s coaching team and is often found in the stands to begin with to get a different perspective of the action in front of him, which he feeds into the manager.

The pair worked together at Liverpool and the Anfield legend is a “rock star” of the game, according to Beale.

“How he manages the changing room is good and he is a very good coach but he wants to stand back and assess players,” he said. “He comes in and says his points at different times.

“It gives me some autonomy to do our training in the long-term, along with the other coaches, in planning and implementing.

“At the moment, I think he is helping me grow and learn. I hope I am helping him structurally and with ideas on the pitch.

“I like to watch the games upstairs in the first half to get a different angle from Steven down there.

“I have had that wow feeling about Ibrox. We’ve had a lot of memorable games in Europe and the Old Firm in a short period.”