Rangers manager Michael Beale's Celtic treble fear - 'it's unthinkable for us not to win a trophy'

Rangers manager Michael Beale concedes it is “unthinkable” for his club not to win a trophy this season when he considers the possible result of such failure.

Celtic await the winners of the second Viaplay League Cup semi-final that will pit Beale’s side against Aberdeen on Sunday afternoon. With Ange Postecoglou’s men holding a nine-point lead in the cinch Premiership, the Ibrox team’s title prospects appear largely forlorn. That leaves the two knock-out competitions - Rangers facing St Johnstone in Perth in the Scottish Cup next Saturday, following a midweek league encounter at Kilmarnock - not only as their most realistic hopes of silverware but the routes to preventing their bitter rivals landing a fifth treble in seven years. Celtic’s most recent domestic clean sweeps covered the 2018-19 and 2019-2020 seasons wherein Beale was right-hand man to Steven Gerrard at Rangers, a partnership that then propelled Ibrox side to the 2020-21. The 42-year-old, who has won five and drawn one of the six games since he succeeded Giovanni van Bronckhorst in late November, does not want to contemplate a third Celtic treble when he is operating across the city.

“When you start the season, there are three trophies up for grabs,” he said. “For the players, that was the standards, the goals, the aims they set themselves with Gio and his staff, and then me coming in and inheriting this group. It's unthinkable [all the trophies] would go elsewhere because there's a big probability they are only going to Celtic if they don't come here. We don't want that, we have had to live that before. It's important that we try to win every trophy in front of us.

"When you are talking about the league, if you believe deep down with 17 or 18 games to go that they might have a tough day or moment, then you have to be within striking distance. It's a shame really because five minutes killed us a couple of weeks ago [in the drawn game against Celtic at Ibrox, where Rangers led 2-1 before a late equaliser]. But we have to keep doing our job, getting better and improving. The players are playing for their futures. That's not me saying that because I am a new manager and I am judge and jury, it's their contract situations. The players deserve a little bit of credit up to this stage but we know the next week is a tough week."