STEVEN Gerrard has warned his Rangers players they must show more class in defeat after Daniel Candeias and Alfredo Morelos refused to shake hands with their Livingston rivals on Sunday.

There were angry exchanges following the final whistle in the Ladbrokes Premiership game at the Tony Macaroni Arena as both sides squared up to each other.

Lee Miller, the Livingston striker who watched the game from the stands, branded Candeias and Morelos, who were both involved in the bust-up, as “disgraceful” and “unprofessional”.

Gerrard, whose side fell eight points behind top flight leaders Hearts, who they take on at Ibrox on Sunday, as a result of the 1-0 loss, admitted some of his charges should have acted differently in defeat.

“When Rangers come to town it’s everyone’s cup final, everyone wants to beat us,” he said.

“I said after the game that Livingston were well within their rights to celebrate. It was a massive win for them.

“They are within their rights if they keep it respectful. We are well within our rights to feel upset and disappointed. All the (Rangers) players were angry and annoyed.

“That’s football. If my players had skipped off the pitch happy it wouldn’t have been right, likewise if the Livingston players hadn’t celebrated.

“It’s an emotional game, that’s why we play it. Maybe they got it slightly wrong, maybe we got it slightly wrong. Who’s bothered? We lost, we move on.

“But you should shake hands whether you win, lose or draw. I shook hands with every single one of their players and their coaching staff. I didn’t enjoy it, but I showed my respects.”

Asked if his players should have followed his lead, Gerrard said: “Yeah, because we are Rangers and we are playing for a historic club that shows class. That’s who we are representing.

“So sometimes you have to bite your tongue or hold your emotions back and save it for when we are behind closed doors.

“I think you have always got to be respectful. I think you always have to be respectful to your fellow professionals and the challenge and the test. It was a good game. We were on the wrong side of it and we are all disappointed. But you still have to show a bit of class, I think.

“I think you know that when you come to a club like this. We are lucky, because we play for a team that wins more than we lose.”

Gerrard, though, has urged his men to put the disappointment of the Livingston defeat out of their minds and focus fully on bouncing back with a victory in their second Europa League group game against Rapid Vienna in Glasgow this evening.

“After a defeat the natural thing is to go in and get in their faces, rant and rave,” he said. “But sometimes as a manager you need to take a step back and see if you have any winners. Find out if you have good people in your dressing room with the right mentality. If you have the wrong people, those people will start pointing fingers, they’ll look to shift the blame.

“The people I want to work with are the ones who look in the mirror and say, ‘that was me, I played my part, I need to sort myself out’. I saw plenty of that after Sunday and I did it myself. But we haven’t got time dwell on it, or drag into this game.”