Michael Beale

So Derek McInnes has got to change that mentality as the previous three or four managers have been unable to do.

Danny Roll, Philippe Clement, Michael Beale, et cetera, et cetera.

So, um, what the signs of the last two games, beating Celtic at Ibrox comfortably in the League Cup, beating Celtic at Celtic Park comfortably-

Mm

Yeah

... and then he was gone.

Um, [smacks lips] Michael Beale-

Yeah

Absolutely breathtaking, and also scored one of the funniest own goals any of us have ever seen.

Uh, Bromley, again, another club that have been non-league for a long, long time, uh, but they are now up into League One, so you'd expect that in time we will play them in a cup, uh, at some point Uh, ex-Reds Academy coach Michael or Mick Beale, uh, he was born in Bromley, which is in Southeast London.

Uh, Newport County, again, they spent a lot of time in, in non-league, but again, they've been in the Football League long enough that you'd think we would've drawn them at some point.

Stevenage, um, again, like these are all teams that spent huge chunks of their existence in, in non-league.

... you, you know, bang on.

But without Mick Beale, Steven Gerrard's not gonna work.

Sorry.

It's just not gonna work.

Mick Beale was his number two.

Anyway.

He'd be probably would, he probably would bring him back.

No, he wouldn't because Mick Beale's out managing somewhere in Belgium-

who's a bigger hitter than Mickey Beale.

Michael Beale, obviously, if you don't know, probably one of the best player developers in the game, worked at all levels with an academy football, pro football, pro level now.

He's a manager now in Belgium.

He's been on the show many, many times, so I'm sure you know him.

One, like you say, j- j- you know, just how difficult a situation he first walked into.

Off the back of obviously the, um, the, the disastrous kind of Michael Beale/Mike Dodds end to the previous season.

The, the summer of be- you know, pretty fractious summer of, "Why on earth aren't Sunderland appointing a head coach?" The, the, then he-

Jack Clark, Jack Clark going

But also just the general kind of the feeling among the fan base.

Obviously, having all of us gone through not very long before the descent into League One and the four-year sort of period of being marooned in that particular division, which I don't think anybody enjoyed, it was feeling like, oh, maybe we're... turning round back into looking at going into a sort of period like this again and we'd had the game against Newcastle in the cup and all of the you know palaver that went on around that with the decorations and what have you leave that there we'd had yeah we'd had the um the rather fruitless appointment of Michael Beale and then obviously he went in rather acrimonious circumstances and there were a lot of people who were feeling rather vindicated for having negative opinions of him from before he took the job and then people who'd come out the bat for him they were then feeling probably quite let down by the way it all went and you know there was a bit of a schism among some of the fans and it was just it was not a nice place to be was it the club just in general and also then leading specifically into lebris we had that whole kind of social media thing that ramped up towards the summer of well now it's been x number of days since Sunderland had a manager wasn't it yeah oh we've crossed 100 days since we had a manager lads um you know all that so it wasn't the happiest of places that reggie came into was it on day one i think it's easy to skate over that when we look back and obviously we'll talk about how we went on to change that and thankfully pretty quickly you know we ended up on a on a pretty good run but yeah the club that he walked into i think it's it's basically impossible to overstate how difficult of a job he had on to turn that round quickly like he did yeah it wasn't a great place it obviously wasn't the same club as it was when we were rock bottom of the championship and actually going down into lead one but sort of mood wise it wasn't far off

Yeah, and I was just looking towards the end of that season, actually, and I was just looking.

We won two out of the last 15, I think it is, maybe 16, 15.

And you're somebody I'm really proud of.

And Mickey Beale, another one, is an ex-student who hasn't done bad for himself.

So I'm proud of people like that, like Mickey yourself, because you kind of flown the flag of what when I started doing it, I believed in and I've never stopped believing in.

And sometimes it's quite detrimental to my own advancement and my own employment at times because I stick to my guns.

Aye.

I d- do, but, uh, uh, Michael Beale for me is elite level coach.

Yeah.

But like he says, it's, there's no doubt it's different.

... knew I was retiring almost.

Yeah.

How did, uh, how did Michael B- uh, Rangers football change when Michael Beale being the manager instead of the coach? Was it exact same way he's played in the chair?

The same.

Where Rangers should have been 3-0 up at the start of that second half in the Yusuf Chirmita game and yet they draw 2-2.

So many times in recent years, I think of Philippe Clermont's first Old Firm game, I think of Michael Beale's at the start of his first full season, when there's been a little bit of vulnerability with Celtic, Rangers haven't punished them and they've let them off the hook.

They've not done that this time.

And again, as we discussed post-match on Sunday, not only does that compound the misery for your rivals and put them into a bit of a state of soul searching, but it allows you to just, as Rangers, focus on yourself and create momentum, create a positive atmosphere.