Michael Beale was often described as the brains behind Steven Gerrard’s coaching team – even by the manager himself – a label the man himself feels is disrespectful and that it was the sum of the parts that saw them restore our battered reputation in Europe and win our first Scottish Premiership title for a decade in such emphatic fashion.
There were calls for him to be considered as Steven Gerrard’s replacement when he went to Aston Villa, however, there is little to suggest that he was ever under consideration, this hasn’t stopped fans from talking about one day welcoming back our former first-team head coach.
Beale has been speaking to several members of the Scottish press after starting out on his own at QPR and when asked about the possibility of returning to Ibrox he said, as reported by Glasgow Live:
“Where Rangers are now they can secure any manager they want. I’m just a novice manager and I have to do well here at QPR.
“Do I have a lot of friends at Rangers and are friendly with the board? Yes, my links are strong.
“But, when Gio eventually decides to move on they will have a host of people after the job.
“The club has just played in the Europa League final.
“I think they will be looking at much bigger fish than Mick Beale.”
I have to agree with Beale, not only that but I think his stock is unnaturally high amongst some Rangers fans. There is no doubt that he managed to get a side well organised and capable of competing against some top sides in Europe as well as a record breaking league campaign but there were enough flaws and problems in his three and a half years to suggest that he is far from the messiah some would have you believe.
Our shocking cup form under Gerrard is one place to start, only the league cup final in 2019 could we really say that we were hard done by, the others were borderline embarrassing. Then there is the issues against, what we see most weeks in Scotland, the dreaded low block.
Additionally, at the beginning of this campaign, for all that we were top of the league when the previous coaching team left, our form had been poor, without any real sign of it improving as we struggled to break teams down on a weekly basis and conceded the first goal almost every week.
Beale now has the opportunity to show that he can be flexible as a manager, a quality that, sometimes, we lacked during his time at Rangers, a lot of eyes will be on QPR as fans look to see if he really is as clever as they think or hope, he might be.