The fallout from Michael Beale and his debacle at Sunderland continues, and while Ibrox Noise did say to leave the man alone, and we sort of stand by that, he’s not making it easy.
The ex-Rangers boss was caught with his hands down and apparently shaving while he was at it while bending forward for a cactus plant with the latest absolute shambles from the formerly-credible Liverpool coach-turned football outcast and laughing stock.
If ever a man was not suited to management in football it’s Beale, and the outed player_id Twitter account really is up there as one of the most embarrassing things we’ve seen in football.
And we’ve seen Sam Lammers.
For those of you under a rock, the short version of this story is that Beale set up, years ago, a player_id account, some sort of football business account while he was a coach in Brazil.
It was neutral, informative, and just an objective data thingy.
That changed when he went to Sunderland.
The player_id account angrily and persistently defended Beale, slaughtering the Black Cat fans and using as much data and argument as it could to justify everything about his management.
Fans, who didn’t know any better, accused it of being a burner account for Beale himself, with a huge hint of tongue in cheek, but one intrepid user did massive digging and discovered that in fact, it WAS Beale himself.
Michael Beale was behind a fake account pretending to be someone else, and single-handedly defending all his errors, mistakes, misjudgements you name it.
Now, on the face of it, there’s nothing actually wrong with a manager defending himself, in fact, it’s a needed requirement of the job.
But what Beale did was sneaky, underhand, deceptive, and has probably just about written the end of his career in football.
Not a single club will be willing to take on a man with no managerial talent and a stubborn chip on his shoulder at criticism.
Every manager will be criticised – yes, Beale was more venomously hated at Sunderland than most bosses, but sadly a lot of that he brought on himself, even if he didn’t deserve the nasty and personal stuff that depressingly comes with the territory.
His own personality just isn’t suited to management, he doesn’t have the temperament or mental fortitude for it.
And this Twitter shambles is toe-curlingly embarrassing.
The Trai Hume thing was the final straw for most fans, where Beale outright ignored a handshake from a player he’d just subbed, and then lied to the press about Hume being his best friend (heard that a few times) and it was a total accident.
In short, Beale needs to change career.
We cannot see him getting another job in football, because he’s so well known to be a liar, a deceptive manipulator, and completely untrustworthy with inferiority issues.
We wanted to give him a bit of space to get on with his life, but when you’re as much a pathological liar and deeply deceptive as he is, we’re not sure exactly where you can go in this game.
Oh Michael, you could have managed in the Premier League.
What have you done?