The word loyalty has been banded about a lot recently after Michael Beale chose to leave QPR and head back north, an issue almost entirely of his own making after an impassioned speech soon after rejecting the chance to move to Wolverhampton Wanderers and the Premier League.
But Rangers aren’t Wolves.
Loyalty has many meanings and, as he has spoken about at length before, Beale bought into our club like nowhere else he had been before, not only that but he settled into the country to the extent that their daughter was born here and named after it.
Beale saw the opportunity to return to Rangers as a privilege, he has seen us struggle and felt a commitment to the club to return and get us back where we belong. Speaking to GiveMeSport, journalist Dean Jones has backed his decision and that loyalty is a quality rarely afforded from clubs to their managers when things aren’t going well:
“Just generally on Beale, I think that the whole situation is interesting.
“I know people are raising their eyebrows because of being so loyal not long ago and now he’s heading out the door. But I think sometimes there become moments in anyone’s career that become too good to turn down and I’m told that that’s how he viewed this job.
“We should consider too, QPR haven’t won in six games and would QPR remain loyal to him if that continued deep into January and they weren’t winning games? Probably not.
“So, for any manager, you’ve got to think of when bigger opportunities come along, because you don’t know when you’re going to get a big job offer again, and that’s the case here.”
Jones is right. In football, you have to look after yourself because you never know what is around the corner be it an injury for players or a poor run of form seeing a board wield the axe.
That Beale never hid his desire to one day return to Rangers has also been a huge factor, add that to the training ground, stadium, fans and profile of the club and it’s easy to see why he came back.
Loyalty, or a lack of it, isn’t why so many observers are bitter about the appointment of our new manager, it’s jealousy that, despite the quality of our league, we still have a pulling power that matches all but the biggest of those in the Premier League.
As a wise man once said – “money can’t buy you love”.