Michael Beale happy to hand out opportunities amid Rangers injury crisis

Michael Beale will dig deep into his Rangers squad for the trip to Hibernian on Sunday but he is determined to build on the recent upswing in form.

The Light Blues, guaranteed to finish runners-up to cinch Premiership champions Celtic for a second successive season, go into the game on the back of a morale-boosting 3-0 win over their Old Firm rivals at Ibrox last weekend.

That first win of the season over the Hoops followed a 1-0 home win over Aberdeen, after losing to both of those teams in the previous two matches.

Defender Connor Goldson is a doubt for the Easter Road game and could be added to a lengthy injury list which includes Borna Barisic, Ben Davies, Ryan Kent, Antonio Colak, Kemar Roofe, Tom Lawrence, Steven Davis and Filip Helander while on-loan attacker Malik Tillman is now back at Bayern Munich with a hamstring problem which has ended his season.

The Gers boss said: “In terms of the young players, we’ve lost Bailey Rice and Zak Lovelace to international duty with Scotland and England Under-17s, at the Euros.

“So there will be one or two others get an opportunity.

“There’s players that have been injured for big parts of the season that need an opportunity as well and we are going to need everyone.

“We probably have 16 players to get us through the last three games next week: Saturday, Wednesday, Saturday.

“We want to end the season well. We know the teams we are playing this week are still in the hunt for European places, so they are not slowing down.

“It is important for us that after two home wins against Aberdeen and Celtic that we back that up this weekend.”

However, with changes for next season certain to be made, Beale stressed the need for the comprehensive win over Celtic not to be romanticised.

The former QPR boss said: “When the sun is shining on your face and you get a good result then everything feels better.

“Other times, when the wind is in your face and everything is rubbish – that’s the life of a football manager in this city.

“I’ve always said there’s a core of players that will move forward, you don’t change a whole squad,  you try to improve your squad in certain areas.

“Last week was a decent performance but it is important we don’t get romantic over one result.

“People have had all season to play and perform and to show everyone if they should be involved or not. It was a good day last week.”