Michael Beale’s claim that Rangers are unlikely to win the league this season isn’t exactly wrong, but given the Famous still have two Old Firm encounters to narrow the gap down to three points, we at Ibrox Noise don’t want to give up hope, and do wonder what Beale’s motivation for saying that is.

Did he want to temper expectations? Is he playing mind games and believes we can actually win the thing?

It’s hard to second-guess this manager, because he presents a front of talking honestly while expressing a lot of absolute rubbish and contradicting himself incessantly. So we won’t bother trying.

What we will say is we’ve not given up hope. Yes, the other team have a 9 point lead, but them winning the league by just three points would show the staggering progress Rangers made under Beale, and how invalid their title win would actually be.

Why? Because Beale’s Rangers have at least been a match for them, while beating them twice, should we do it, will absolutely surpass them, assuming we win the rest of our league fixtures.

See, Walter Smith’s Rangers were the best team in Scotland from January 2007 (his return) to that summer. We didn’t overhaul Celtic’s lead completely, but we were the best team during those 5 months.

And Beale, should his Rangers side beat Celtic even once while not losing any other matches, would be able to say with assurance that Rangers have been the best team in Scotland since he took charge.

Of course, that’s a big if – it depends on overcoming Parkhead’s lot twice, and likely maintaining our 100% league record since he came in, so we’re not counting unhatched chickens just yet.

But there is a possibility we could be ‘summer champions’, to put an Italian spin on things. In Italy, there’s an unofficial winter champion, the side top of the table when arriving at the winter break in Serie A – well, Rangers could be the summer version in Scotland, being the champions of the second half going back to the prior November.

Equally, while this means nothing in itself, it would show that since Beale took over, we have been the best team. But there’s much work still to do to achieve even that. We’ll see.

In terms of Beale’s comments, we don’t blame him for tempering expectations – in truth, most fans have conceded the title already anyway, so Beale’s quotes aren’t really that unfair.

But it’s not a white flag. Not yet.