Michael Beale offers up Rangers caveat but admits there's no 'magic wand' in pursuit of progress

Rangers boss Michael Beale is well aware he’s returned to a city where stockpiles of patience are about as plentiful as current supplies of tomatoes to supermarket shelves.

But unless his Rangers restoration project manages to bear fruit and quick, there will be nothing virtuous about the reaction he can expect to face from the disgruntled Ibrox faithful. The Londoner’s barely been back in Glasgow 90 days yet he’s already been given a taste of the bitter backlash he can expect if things go wrong for him in the Gers hotseat.

Losing to Celtic, especially this relentless winning machine constructed by Ange Postecoglou, can happen to any Rangers team. But doing so having sent out what the vast majority of the Rangers support felt was the wrong team has left Steven Gerrard’s former No2 wide open to the wave of criticism that started to build the second it was announced Nico Raskin and Todd Cantwell had been left on the bench.

There’s been stick and plenty of it but it hasn’t done anything to diminish Beale’s belief in his plans to restore Rangers to former heights. Instead, the first bump in the road after 15 games in charge has only served to reinforce the ideas he has drawn up for the future. Changes are coming in the summer - perhaps not as many as some fans would like - but eventually Beale hopes that if he picks his crop carefully, he’ll be able to reap a rich trophy harvest in the years to come.

“My reaction has been strong and the players’ reaction has been strong too,” said the Gers boss as he reflected on his first setback since returning to the club. We’re bitterly disappointed that we let down the fans.

“The fans were optimistic going into the game on the back of the run we’d been on. We’d shown steady progress as