Former Rangers player and manager Ally McCoist has this morning changed his mind about new Ibrox manager Michael Beale, confirming that while he was surprised initially by this appointment, he’s thought twice about it and considers it a good signing.
Speaking to Ibrox Noise and Grosvenor Sports, McCoist summed his feelings up thus:
“Hiring any manager is a gamble. I was surprised that Rangers hired Michael as I thought they’d prefer someone with more experience but when you actually think about it, they’ve hired someone that knows the club, has been there and knows what’s required of him. The one thing he needs to get; is support from the board – it’s vital. The next two or three months are vital for Beale and his tenure.”
And he’s absolutely correct. This is why we feel Beale has a strong chance of success and we agree with every word McCoist has said. Beale has a huge advantage of not only being a long-standing coach with 20 year experience, but he was at Rangers for almost four years learning the club inside out so he has a unique stance of familiarity with the Famous.
He is also very very good at his job, as his CV shows. For his own part, McCoist only struggled at Ibrox after Steven Naismith’s injury, until then the side was motoring. The sliding door of McCoist’s reign in Govan was not one we can measure him on, but Beale is back for seconds.
The other example of course is Walter taking over from Graeme Souness, which also wasn’t a very popular Rangers appointment by the former chairman and owner Sir David Murray, but it proved everybody wrong and the club arguably ended up with our greatest manager ever.
Beale has a lot of work to even be a tenth as good, but if he gets the support from the Ibrox board McCoist alludes to, he has a chance for sure and while we don’t right now expect 56 our way this season, it only took a couple of signings for Walter in January 2007 to completely turn that season around. He knew what he was doing.
For Rangers’ sake, we hope Beale does too.