Beale Applauds The Rangers Support

MICHAEL BEALE has heaped praise on the Rangers support for their backing of his team on the road as his side prepares for their next trip away from Ibrox at McDermid Park tomorrow as they begin their Scottish Cup defence.

The Gers travel to Perth for the fourth-round cup tie away to St. Johnstone with a 100% record on the road so far since the manager took charge at the end of November.

Speaking to the media ahead of the clash Beale has applauded the support his team have received on their travels and hopes they can play their part in getting them through the tie tomorrow evening.

He said: “It has been big in all the away games so far, wherever we go we know we have got a fantastic support.

“It helped us massively up at Dundee United and it helped us again in midweek - we have had some difficult away games recently.

“Obviously with the weather and the change of pitches, and I expect all of that to be involved tomorrow, in which is a really tough cup tie.”

The Light Blues will have three full stands in Perth and the manager states everyone knows the significance of getting through as Rangers’ defence of the cup gets underway.

He continued: “It is nice us and for the players because we know the fans are going to be there supporting us, and I think our fans are aware that it is a very important game.

“It is going to be on a tough pitch against an opponent who is going to make life difficult for us, the most important thing tomorrow night is that Rangers are in the next round of the cup.

“That is our focus, and I am sure the fans that are travelling up to Perth are aware of whatever it takes we want to come away tomorrow night with a victory and into the next round.”

The 42-year-old says he doesn’t feel pressure to bring both cup trophies back to Ibrox this campaign and says managing at a big club comes with an added expectation to deliver success.

He continued: “You come in and you inherit the situation, the expectation is to calm things down, recover the injuries, to make a happy camp and make the team win and then build on that.

“There are always some red flags in every performance, but no performance in football is perfect, we go to Rugby Park the other night and we concede early, and we had 72 per-cent possession and scored three goals.

“When people say to me after words about what about this or that going wrong, but I say what about the three goals that we scored that got us the three points and got us back from a goal behind.

“I just need to keep working on those things, making the group aware of some of the areas of where they can tighten up, in the main I am really happy.

“The expectation here at the start of the season is always huge, I have come in at the middle of it and you try and turn something around, we have got to one cup final, we won this trophy last year for the first time in 12 years, so it is important that we are still in the hat on Saturday evening."


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