Michael Beale, remember him, has effectively admitted he made a pig’s ear of the Rangers job, finally, at long last taking (partial) responsibility for just not being good enough, although quite how seriously we can take his comments is anyone’s guess.

Speaking yesterday on Sky Sports, the currently-unemployed former Rangers and Sunderland manager suggested that he basically signed and dumped too many players, and that the whole operation was a mess.

It’s the first time we’ve heard him use that excuse, but here’s what he said:

“Going into this season it’s fair to say we probably disrupted the group too much too soon, and there was a lot of turnover of players and on the outside.”

Of course, do his excuses actually matter?

Well, it’s a sort of admission that he made a pig’s ear of the transfer market, signing players ill-suited to the club and getting rid of ones that should have stayed.

That is at least a sense of honesty from him for the first time, so while it took a long time for him to effectively admit he shouldn’t have dumped Scotty Arfield or Antonio Colak, for example, he’s hinted at it.

Of course, Rangers are in a strong place at the moment, in the league and with the cups, and ‘new’ manager Philippe Clement is being lauded by all and sundry for the job he has done, so Beale’s ‘revelation’ is a bit hollow.

Especially given how Clement has gotten so much more out of the players than he was, Beale’s lack of football understand incriminated him very badly indeed.

He also, in many ways, doesn’t actually hold responsibility completely – even with this admission he says ‘we’ and not ‘I’ and still blames ‘internal disruption’ in terms of board movement.

Beale was a bad choice as manager, and he’s been reduced to a TV pundit.

In truth, it’s probably the safest place for him.