'Familiar faces' await Michael Beale as Rangers go on road to Livingston in cinch Premiership

Before taking over from Giovanni van Bronckhorst as Rangers boss in November, Beale had worked as assistant coach to Steven Gerrard at Ibrox.

Previous to that Beale had been involved in the youth set-ups at Chelsea and Liverpool and a mini-reunion of former players will take place at the Tony Macaroni Arena where he will look to extend his almost flawless record as Light Blues manager of 12 wins and one draw.

He expects a tough afternoon against David Martindale’s side, who drew 1-1 with Rangers at Ibrox in October before Beale returned from a stint as QPR boss to take the hotseat in Govan.

“David will have his team fired up,” said Beale, who will assess the fitness of midfielders Ryan Jack, John Lundstram and Nicolas Raskin.

“Funny enough, in the leaving of Scotland and then coming back, the backbone of his team – the goalkeeper, Shamal George, I worked with him a lot at Liverpool.

“Morgan Boyes was a young boy who played at centre-half coming through the academy.

“Stevie Kelly, I had a lot of affection for and a lot of thoughts towards his future when he was here (at Rangers) and I think he has been a good player for Livingston this year.

“And Joel Nouble was my striker at Chelsea many, many years ago at under-9s, under-10s, under-12s and under-13s so I know Joel and his family very well. There are some familiar faces there.

“It is important that we go there and put on a really strong away performance.

“Our last away performance in the league was away to Hearts (3-0 win) and it was our best performance to date. So I am looking for somewhere around that, certainly out of possession.

“They are fourth in the league, they are full of confidence but we can’t be in stronger form than we are ourselves.”

On Thursday, Beale admitted the chances of catching league leaders Celtic were ‘low’ but vowed to keep fighting until the end.

He said: “What I would say is momentum can change things in football so all we have to do is keep doing our job and hope the momentum changes.”