CEO James Bisgrove has muddied the waters over former Rangers manager Michael Beale’s influence on transfers, both confirming and denying the man had too much influence.
Speaking after Philippe Clement’s unveiling, Bisgrove was pressed on the ex-boss’s input on transfers, and he admitted Beale ‘heavily influenced’ the process, but then changed tack on that assertion and claimed Beale was on part of a process that Ross Wilson and others had put in place months earlier.
He said:
“The reality is that the decisions for the summer transfer window were taken over a period of time – three months, six months, even a year before – by the scouting team and even the previous director of football working with the manager. They put that plan in place. So when we got to the transfer window it was very clear what we were going to do. Yes, it was heavily influenced by the manager.”
So not only is he admitting Michael Beale had a massive part to play in those signatures, he also adds responsibility for those fails on the heads of the scouting department too.
He goes on:
“No, no, that (Beale had too much influence) wasn’t what I was saying. What I was saying was that the transfer window over the summer was planned over a period of time. That had involvement from the scouting team, the chief scout and former directors on the football side. The manager was at the heart of that. But it wasn’t only the manager that was taking the decisions.”
Sorry, but by saying ‘heavily influenced’ and ‘at the heart of that’ you’re admitting that Beale basically designed his own team.
Now, the point is Rangers fans knew this, we gave him, unwillingly in some cases, a tabula rasa to build his very own FM 2024 Rangers side, having started sort of from scratch.
But it’s evident it completely failed. He wasn’t the right man to do this, and had far too much impact on decisions, and bad ones at that.
Bisgrove is trying to save a bit of face here, not slaughter Beale for what was a complete shambles of a summer window, and delegate the responsibility as much as he can over to scouting.
But Bisgrove is a fairly honest guy, and in doing so, lets slip that Beale more or less had the run of Ibrox to do what he wanted, backed up by the scouting section.
A mistake Rangers should never have made.