Michael Beale explains why Rangers won’t give Celtic guard of honour as Ange Postecoglou issues response

Michael Beale has confirmed Rangers will NOT be affording Scottish Premiership champions Celtic a guard of honour at Ibrox tomorrow.

The Hoops head across the city to Govan for a lunchtime kick-off on Saturday in the sixth and final meeting between the two Glasgow giants this season.

Debate surrounding whether the Light Blues should applaud their arch rivals onto the park has been widely discussed on social media in recent days after Ange Postecoglou’s men secured the title with four post-split games to spare last weekend.

However, the precedent has been set in recent years following the Parkhead club’s decision to refuse to pay tribute to Rangers when Steven Gerrard’s side ended their ten-in-a-row bid in 2021. Rangers took the same stance two years earlier at Ibrox shortly after eight-in-a-row was clinched.

While Beale acknowleged the achievement of his opposite number’s Treble-chasing side this season, the Englishman explained why he doesn’t believe applauding them onto the pitch in front of a capacity 50,000 home crowd would be the correct thing to do.

Speaking to Sky Sports, he said: “No it doesn’t become tricky here because in the past it’s been turned down and hasn’t been done. I don’t think they would want us to. I think in a stadium with our fans it wouldn’t be the right thing to do either.

“We have a lot of respect for them in terms of them winning the league. They’ve clearly been the best team, the league table doesn’t lie. But that’s been dealt with in the past so that’s probably been taken out of my hands, thankfully.”

In response to Beale’s comments, Hoops boss Postecoglou has claimed his side don’t need a guard of honour gesture to know there is respect between the bitter footballing rivals.

The Australian stated: “It’s no big deal for me. Those kind of things seem to be a bit symbolic rather than anything real. Respect is shown in different ways and we don’t need a guard of honour to know that.

“There’s respect between the two sides and certainly between the two sets of players. It might be grudging but they know how hard it is to be successful. Rangers won it two years ago and we have won it the last two years so that respect is there and we don’t need a guard of honour for that.”