Rangers boss Michael Beale has praised defender John Souttar despite the 3-2 defeat away at rivals Celtic on Saturday afternoon.
Gers fans were stunned when Beale’s starting lineup emerged on Saturday with Connor Goldson not involved.
Goldson did make the trip to Parkhead but a hip injury meant he wasn’t included.
That meant John Souttar was brought in, making just his second league start of the season – and the first came on the opening weekend of the campaign.
Souttar has been through sadly predictable injury problems since arriving on a free transfer from Hearts.
Being thrown into an Old Firm game isn’t ideal and Souttar had one horror moment as Rangers lost 3-2.
With Rangers already 2-1 down, Souttar played a poor pass back to goalkeeper Allan McGregor.
The veteran stopper just had no chance of reaching it and Jota was on hand to slide home Celtic’s third.
Going 3-1 down was just too much for Rangers to recover from and that pass will be playing on Souttar’s mind for a while yet.
Michael Beale praises John Souttar
Despite that error, Rangers boss Beale had words of praise for defender Souttar.
Beale has told The Daily Record that he felt Souttar was ‘outstanding’ in Rangers’ defeat to Celtic.
Beale highlighted that Rangers actually lost Goldson to injury with just minutes to go in training on Friday.
That catapulted Souttar into the Rangers starting lineup and Beale felt that he actually played ‘really well’ in a tough situation.
Beale added that he doesn’t want to focus too much on Souttar’s misplaced pass for Jota’s goal.
The Rangers boss clearly understands the difficult circumstances facing Souttar and would rather focus on the positives.
“I thought John was outstanding,” said Beale. “He hasn’t played all season because of injury. He’s had to bide his time. We lost Connor with 20 minutes to go in training on Friday and John was then playing. But I thought he played really well. I don’t want the focus to be on the misplaced pass. To come in and play 90 minutes here, John did well. That’s probably the start of his Rangers career,” he added.
It’s unclear just how serious Goldson’s injury is, but Souttar will certainly hope to play a few more games before the summer.
Saturday’s mistake was a bad one for Souttar but Beale will seemingly back his defender rather than hammer him whilst he’s down.
