MICHAEL BEALE reckons he and Steven Gerrard would have guided Rangers to the title if they had remained at the club.

The pair departed Ibrox for Aston Villa back in November last year as they fulfilled their Premier League dreams.

Since then Beale has become Queens Park Rangers manager and Gerrard has been axed as Villa boss.

It is changed days for the duo, but Beale reckons there would have been more success in Govan had Gerrard stuck around.

“What a football club,” he told BT's Currie Club. “And what a group of people that are around it and support it. It’s an institution. Anybody who was part of our staff who had the opportunity to go back there, they would in the future. It had a massive hold on us.

"Do I think we could have taken it forward? I definitely think we would have won the league. When we left, we were still four points in front. There is no way they (Celtic) would have come past us.

“We hadn’t lost in eight or nine Old Firms (it was actually seven). The next one was maybe in the post because in a two-horse competition anyone can win in any derby. But the games weren’t particularly close. They might have been in the scoreline but when you were in the stadium, we were very much in control of every game.

“What I would say is that the manager who went in (Postecoglou) is a very, very good manager and a very good coach. They were going to improve, but so were we. We weren’t planning on standing still. We’d evolved subtly over time. The mentality at the time was no one was stopping us.”