Michael Beale’s 1-month reign in the Rangers dugout has come to an end and the Gers board are now on the lookout for a new manager.
Join Martyn Simpson and Barry Anderson for the reaction to Michael Beale's departure.
Join Martyn Simpson and Barry Anderson for the reaction to Michael Beale's departure.
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 - Hello and welcome to this
00:04 National World Fitbit Talk special.
00:07 My name's Martin Simpson.
00:08 I'm joined by Barry Anderson from Edinburgh Evening News.
00:11 Michael Beale has been sacked by Rangers
00:13 and we're gonna be giving our immediate thoughts
00:15 on that decision.
00:16 What's next for the Ibrox club
00:18 and whether or not it was the right call.
00:21 Let's start on that one, Barry.
00:22 Any disagreement that this was the right decision
00:25 for the Rangers board to make?
00:26 - Probably not.
00:29 At this stage, Martin,
00:30 I think when you get to the point,
00:32 we all know that when fans have turned on a manager
00:34 and they've lost that faith
00:35 and the backing's just not there anymore,
00:37 then there's probably only one decision for a board to make.
00:40 And Rangers, certainly after Saturday's result,
00:42 Rangers board got to that point.
00:44 I think Michael Beale had kind of reached the point
00:46 on no return, again, with the Rangers fans,
00:48 purely because of some of the results this season
00:50 and particularly the league table
00:52 when you're sitting seven points behind Celtic
00:54 and you know, you weren't even out of September
00:57 at that point, then it's always going to be difficult
01:00 for a Rangers manager at that point.
01:02 - Lewis and I were speaking about this just last week.
01:04 It was like he had a gauntlet to run, did Michael Beale,
01:08 in the sense that one slip up
01:10 and he was gone from Rangers next.
01:13 We basically figured it would be right up
01:15 till the end of October
01:16 in terms of all the matches they had.
01:18 And lo and behold, it comes at the end of September
01:21 with a 3-1 win for Aberdeen at Ibrox.
01:24 It was a pretty, I think it was a,
01:26 despite winning four games in a row,
01:28 he was in a untenable position
01:30 going into the Aberdeen match
01:32 and it would have just,
01:34 it felt like it would have just continued.
01:36 Even if he'd won the Aberdeen match,
01:38 it wasn't buying him any time.
01:40 If he'd have lost to the next week to St. Mirren,
01:42 he would be gone as well.
01:44 Did you get that similar feeling?
01:46 - Yeah, I think, again, with any football manager,
01:49 any club, I think when you get to the point
01:51 where the fans have turned,
01:52 it's almost impossible to turn that round
01:56 and change it and get them back onside again
01:58 because if fans have turned against you
02:00 and they're at the point
02:02 where they would like a new manager in,
02:03 then you can win the next six games,
02:05 you can win the next 10 games,
02:06 but once you lose the 11th,
02:08 then the knives are out again
02:10 and everybody's turning on you.
02:11 And it almost just goes straight back to square one.
02:13 And I think that's a position that Michael Bale was in.
02:15 Saturday's performance and result
02:17 clearly didn't help him.
02:18 Before that, as you say, four wins on the bounce,
02:21 which is a good run,
02:23 but I think probably the performances within those
02:25 results, if you'd analyse them,
02:27 you would see that it was unconvincing
02:29 in a lot of ways for Rangers.
02:30 And I think that's what a lot of the fans
02:31 had latched onto,
02:32 that although they had been winning some games,
02:35 the performances just weren't what was required.
02:37 And also in the background,
02:39 there's the league table where Celtic were pulling away
02:41 so early in the season.
02:43 - Yeah, the Motherwell game was probably
02:45 the best example of what you're speaking about there.
02:47 I think everyone agreed that Motherwell
02:48 deserved at least a point
02:50 if they didn't deserve to win that match.
02:52 Rangers, very unconvincing there.
02:55 It's, and it goes back to what people always say
02:58 about the pressure of managing Rangers or Celtic.
03:01 Any of our club, certainly in Scotland,
03:04 probably maybe even in the UK,
03:08 if you went on a run of four victories,
03:11 that would buy you at least another couple of weeks.
03:15 Not at Rangers, not when you're falling
03:17 behind your league rivals the way they were.
03:19 It begs the question why they maybe didn't just
03:23 sack him immediately after the Celtic game.
03:26 'Cause it put him in this weird situation
03:28 where he was kind of half in and half out the door.
03:31 And that, yeah, okay, you've not done enough
03:34 to be sacked yet, but realistically,
03:36 what can you do to save your job now?
03:39 And the answer was win every game
03:42 up until the next Old Firm Derby
03:43 and win that too, presumably.
03:45 - Yeah, yeah, I think that's a good point
03:48 because the Celtic one was really kind of
03:51 a dagger in the heart and you did get the feeling there
03:54 that you might not really recover from it
03:56 and subsequently hasn't.
03:57 I think it's interesting what you said there
03:59 about the demands at Rangers and Celtic
04:02 because Michael Beale, if you look at the win percentages,
04:04 Michael Beale's got the best win percentage
04:06 of any permanent Rangers manager except Ali McCoyst.
04:10 So better than Dick Advocaat, better than Walter Smith.
04:13 So he finds himself out of a job
04:15 and that probably highlights just what you're saying there
04:18 about what people expect.
04:20 And you are measured, if you're the Rangers manager,
04:21 you're measured against what you're doing against Celtic,
04:24 i.e. your position in the league,
04:26 how you're faring in the Old Firm games
04:28 and whether you're winning cups compared to them.
04:30 And quite simply, since Michael Beale's been in charge,
04:35 Rangers haven't been able to get close enough to Celtic
04:38 and I think that ultimately is why he's paid the price
04:40 with his job.
04:42 - Yeah, like you say, you talk about
04:44 just having to be close to Celtic, don't you?
04:46 And I think that's the key thing because
04:49 as good as his win percentage was,
04:52 and like you say, it was clearly absolutely excellent,
04:55 he's got no silverware to show for that win percentage.
04:59 The matches against Celtic weren't what they needed to be
05:03 for the most part.
05:04 And you look at like under Van Bronckhorst,
05:08 he had a lot of goodwill
05:11 because he took them to the Europa League final.
05:14 Rangers, Michael Beale just didn't have that,
05:17 that goodwill it felt like with the fans.
05:21 And I think like you say, it shows just,
05:25 you can win games against,
05:27 even against really decent sides
05:28 like Aberdeen Hearts and Hibs,
05:31 beat everyone else in the rest of the league,
05:33 but if you can't beat Celtic, it doesn't matter,
05:36 you're not gonna last long.
05:38 But I mean, just,
05:40 like we can say where do Rangers look now?
05:44 There's going to be a lot of decent candidates
05:48 putting their name in the hat for the job, isn't there?
05:51 - Yeah, there will be.
05:53 There's never, when there's a managerial vacancy at Rangers,
05:55 they're never gonna be short of applicants.
05:57 I think what they need, but more than anything just now,
06:01 is stability in that managerial chair
06:03 because Michael Beale lasted 10 months.
06:06 Before him, Giovanni Van Bronckhorst was there for a year.
06:09 Okay, Steven Gerrard prior to that had three and a half years
06:11 but then we go back to Pedro Coutinho before him
06:13 and he was only there seven months.
06:15 So three of the last four Rangers managers
06:18 have been very short term.
06:19 And I know you can argue that that's the way football is now
06:22 and it is to a degree,
06:24 but any club, you look at any club,
06:25 go across the world, any club at any level,
06:28 it's only the clubs that are successful
06:30 are the ones that have got stability,
06:31 the ones that have got managers in place
06:33 for two and three and four years
06:34 in order to try and build a foundation,
06:36 get the right players in,
06:37 shape the whole team and the squad
06:40 and the tactics the way they want.
06:41 So you need time to do that.
06:42 You don't do that in 10 months.
06:45 I think you need a lot longer
06:47 and that's something that Rangers are needing.
06:49 So whoever comes in has got,
06:52 from Rangers perspective,
06:54 we need to be there for the long term
06:55 and get their ideas across
06:56 and get time to implement those ideas.
06:59 - Do you think whoever comes in
07:00 is gonna be able to get the best
07:02 out of Michael Beale's latest bunch of recruits
07:06 who for the most part
07:07 are really falling below the standards?
07:09 I think the Cyril Dessers
07:12 is probably the poster boy for that.
07:15 He's been by far, in my opinion,
07:17 the most disappointing summer signing
07:20 that Rangers made.
07:21 But it's maybe not quite as bad,
07:24 but definitely not as good as you might have hoped.
07:26 You can see our Sam Lammers, Abdul Asimah.
07:30 Do you think a new manager coming in
07:31 is going to be able to get the best out of these players
07:34 or do you think it's gonna have to be a case
07:36 of as much of a January rebuild
07:38 as the budget will allow?
07:41 - Yeah, that's the point I was just gonna make.
07:43 How much money is there to improve the squad in January?
07:45 And you'd imagine that some of the names
07:48 that Rangers fans will want in as manager,
07:50 these sort of guys,
07:51 if you talk in English Premier League type managers,
07:53 I've heard Frank Lampard mentioned, for example,
07:55 there's plenty of others.
07:57 It would take a lot of money
07:58 to get people like that up to Scotland
08:00 when you consider the kind of jobs
08:01 that they would have on offer in England
08:03 and the money attached to that.
08:04 So if you haven't spent big on a manager,
08:07 you've already spent big on players in the summer,
08:09 they haven't worked, as you mentioned,
08:10 some of the names there,
08:11 Dessars and Lammers and Danilo
08:13 I would throw into that bracket as well.
08:15 So then you get to January,
08:17 how much money is there to try and strengthen the squad?
08:18 There's no doubt it needs to be improved
08:20 because the new arrivals
08:22 simply haven't cut the mustard overall.
08:24 But yeah, it's a very kind of perilous situation.
08:29 Do Rangers put all their eggs in the managerial basket
08:31 and whatever money they have,
08:33 throw at that and hope that they bring in a manager
08:35 that improves the players who are there
08:37 or do they bring in someone else
08:39 who's maybe not quite as expensive in terms of a salary
08:42 and look to keep some money for January
08:45 to try and get new players in?
08:46 It's a tough one.
08:47 Yeah, either way it's tough.
08:49 We'll be back later in the week
08:50 with a full episode of Fitbit Talk
08:52 where we'll be not only discussing the latest
08:54 around Scottish football results,
08:56 but we will be having a more in-depth look
08:57 at the potential candidates that could replace Michael Beale.
09:00 But for the meantime, Barry,
09:02 thanks very much for joining me.
09:03 No problem, thanks.
09:05 (upbeat music)
09:08 (upbeat music)
09:10 (upbeat music)