Michael Beale has offered an honest assessment of Rangers Hampden display as he admitted: 'Celtic deserved to win the game'.
Kyogo Furuhashi was the hero at the national stadium for Ange Postecoglou's side once again as his double helped the Hoops on their way to a 2-1 win over the Light Blues and back to back wins in the competition. He fired twice in the showpiece event last season and he left his mark on the big occasion once more as Beale tasted defeat for the first time.
Alfredo Morelos gave his side hope with 25 minutes to play and sparked some life into their play but they couldn't break Celtic down - who should really have added to their tally with Allan McGregor denying them late on on the counter-attack on a number of occasions. Reacting to Rangers' defeat and his first as boss, Beale said: “I told them to suck it up. We didn’t come to the game until the second half. No qualms we lost the game on the day, it’s not nice, so they need to suck it up, take it on-board.
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“You have to look at yourself in the mirror every day. That’s your biggest opponent. Are you being honest to that person. Are you working hard enough? Is the work we’re doing good enough?
“These are the days that you’re judged on. We’ve got to win the other games but we are judged on these days. We get it.
“That’s what we spoke about in that brief moment. I didn’t want any false opinions in their minds.
“I didn’t really see in the first half an hour what we had discussed and what we planned so I need to find out why that happened and that’s why I was honest at the end.
“When you play a third of game and you’re clearly second best you give yourselves a mountain to climb.
“Celtic deserved to win the game. As much as I was disappointed with my team, the resistance from the opponent was a big one."
Speaking on Viaplay Sport, he added: “It’s up to us now how we want to end this season, we’ve got 12 league games to go, we’ve got a quarter final of a cup coming up so the story for this season for us can still have the right type of ending, but that is no consolation this evening for our fans and for us as a group. We are bitterly disappointed with the result.
“I think naturally the [players] will be disappointed, these cup finals don’t come round every day. They are big opportunities to take and we haven’t taken one today.
“It is certainly going to be sore. It’s got to make us stronger, it’s got to make us bite down on the gum shield and be stronger with our approach and our daily work.
“As we saw today, it’s not nice coming second best against our biggest rivals, fair play to them they won the final they were the better team on the day.
“I thought Celtic were much more energetic around the pitch, they won more duels than us. I didn’t think there was a lot of chances in the game, not until the last 10 minutes when there was a few. When the game was like that I didn’t think we were as decisive as them.
“I didn’t think we showed our best face today so we lost the game.”
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