From what we’re understanding, Michael Beale won’t be Rangers manager for an awful lot longer, with sources telling us the board are considering his position and ascertaining the easiest way to relieve him of his tenure, if that’s the path they take.
There is a further understanding contact has been made with Kevin Muscat’s representatives, as a potential path forward, with it being known Muscat would be interested in a job as big as Rangers.
We cannot confirm any of this as true yet, even the tightest sources get things wrong now and then (4lads told us Aaron Ramsey wouldn’t sign, David Bates was staying, while the fantastic H&H told us Ben Davies would be sold) so we know even the most reliable can be mistaken, but this does seem to fit with the club’s call not to wish Beale a happy birthday yesterday as well as his general performance.
See, Rangers is a massive, MASSIVE job, it’s a hard job, and it takes a truly massive personality and mentality to cope with it.
Alex McLeish’s tenure may not have ended too well, but when we look back at what he did, it was night and day compared with present day. Same with Gio – utterly dreadfully treated by the-then board and not particularly loved by the fans because ‘he wasn’t Stevie’ but he got us to Sevilla and won us the cup.
The point is these guys were big Rangers men, big strong personalities who could handle the rigours of being the manager. Neither of them were terribly-well backed by their boards.
Gerrard too was big and strong, he could handle it – he just wasn’t a very good manager overall and won way too little. But he was of the Walter Smith mentality, capable of dealing with the pressure.
Beale, unfortunately, has fallen considerably short of this – his managerial skills are limited to coaching, and his decision-making is pretty diabolical. He squandered £16M in the summer window and Rangers are remarkably weaker now than we were.
So is he about to be fired? Word is it would take a chunk of change to do it, rumours about a half million clause in his contract… no one really knows.
But the board probably doesn’t favour him too much now. And neither does anyone else.