Now that he has plenty of time on his hands Michael Beale may wonder whether to wallpaper the spare room with cuttings of all the nice things people said about him over the years. He could stick up Steven Gerrard’s line that “it would take me 15 to 20 years to become as good as Michael Beale as an on-pitch coach”. Or Rangers appointing him and saying he was undoubtedly one of the most sought-after young managers in British football. The Rangers midfielder Dujon Sterling called him “a tactical genius” and then there was Beale’s Ibrox assistant, Neil Banfield, gushing: “You talk about Julian Nagelsmann, Thomas Tuchel and Mauricio Pochettino. Micky Beale is not far off that, let me tell you.”
An outstanding and progressive coach, said the Sunderland sporting director Kristjaan Speakman when Beale popped up there in December. Even those who saw through him early, like The Times’s own Matt Dickinson in a wonderfully splenetic column, said that as a QPR season-ticket holder Beale defecting to Rangers after only 22 games in charge was especially painful because of: “The nagging hope-turned-dread that Beale might actually be very good. Too good for us, the bastard.”
Well there’s going to be a bit less of all that from now on, what with Beale torching his reputation in only 15 months. In that time he has blown in and out of three clubs and lost or angered the supporters at all of them. Beale has tumbled down the career ladder and taken heavier bumps on every rung. How he must yearn for the warmth and praise of being widely described as the brains of the operation as Gerrard’s first-team coach when Rangers won the league in 2021.
Beale has a new reputation now and it will take a long time to shake off. Burning his bridges at QPR and then a quick-fire double sacking from Rangers in October and Sunderland on Monday has taken him into the dangerous territory of being seen as hapless and a figure of fun. He is a hard-working and committed coach but for now at least his name is mud.
Once he was about stability and longevity. He has ten years in the Chelsea academy and then six in the Liverpool system. There was the single-mindedness to move to São Paulo in Brazil and then he worked under Gerrard for years at Rangers and Aston Villa. He appeared on coaching podcasts and was hailed as a major emerging talent. In truth, he tended to give the impression that he believed that himself.
In the summer of 2022 he felt “over-cooked” as an assistant and severed the connection with Gerrard to become manager of QPR, saying: “Now is the time, before me and Steven fall out and before I overstep my job.” In fact, though neither of them have talked about it, the pair are no longer close since Beale went out on his own. There was early promise at Loftus Road and delight around the club when he turned down a Premier League job at Wolverhampton Wanderers. That was when a recurring trait became evident. “The only reasons for leaving QPR right now would be selfish ones around ego, status or finance,” he said. “And that’s not really me.” He spoke about what integrity and loyalty meant to him. All lovely, honeyed words for supporters and admirable when you live by them. Just 39 days later he left for Rangers.
• Michael Beale sacked by Sunderland after only 12 games in charge
This is the thing about Beale: friends insist he is a decent man and many players have talked about how influential and helpful he was to them. But he can be his own worst enemy, doing and saying things which rub people up the wrong way. When Rangers were struggling under his predecessor, Giovanni van Bronckhorst, he turned up at a popular fans’ pub in Glasgow and then sat in the Ibrox directors’ box for a game against Aberdeen, even posting about his visit on Instagram.
That broke the unwritten code that a prospective managerial candidate does not appear on the scene like a circling vulture when a peer is struggling. When he was in situ at Rangers he called Ange Postecoglou a “lucky man”, hardly the crime of the century, but a needless source of motivation in the Old Firm rivalry and it niggled the Celtic manager for months.
Beale said that had if he and Gerrard had not gone to Aston Villa in 2021 Rangers would “definitely” have won a second league title in 2022, which was seen as an unnecessary jibe at Van Bronckhorst. Critics see him as a bit too pleased with himself, a bit too fond of his own voice and of saying so much in front of microphones that he was bound to talk himself into trouble.
When he took over Rangers he was 41 years old and had only 22 QPR games as a manger. The job and the task — he started nine points behind Postecolgou’s Celtic — were too big for him and he never won an Old Firm game that mattered. Beale took control of signings and got far too many badly wrong. Tactics chopped and changed and players looked unsure of themselves. Confidence dissolved on the pitch and in the dugout. His fate was sealed by a 3-1 loss to Aberdeen which provoked so much full-time booing that seasoned Ibrox regulars said they had never heard anything like it. He did not last a year at Rangers.
It would have been sensible to take some time out, to reflect and process why it had gone wrong. Instead after just 78 days he took over at Sunderland, a club who have burned through a manager a year for the past two decades. There were red flags: he was replacing a popular predecessor, Tony Mowbray, the Sunderland fans were underwhelmed by him and the club’s young owner, Kyril Louis-Dreyfus, had initially preferred the Reims head coach Will Still.
Beale did not take his own backroom staff. The cycle began again. After a reasonable first four games Sunderland began losing, including at home to Newcastle United in the FA Cup and to Mowbray’s Birmingham City last weekend. He said and did silly things again, needlessly claiming his south London accent counted against him with Sunderland fans and ignoring defender Trai Hume when the 21-year-old put out his hand for a high five as he was substituted. Beale apologised for that but it was more fuel for the fire. He was sacked after 12 games, followed by gleeful social media speculation that the author of an X (formerly Twitter) account repeatedly defending Beale was Beale himself.
News of Beale’s latest sacking drew an immediate response back in Glasgow. “Try to keep your comments sensible,” the administrator of the largest Rangers fans’ messageboard pleaded. Many did. “He’s really needing to give up the management dream,” said one poster on the Follow Follow site. Rangers fans no longer suspect that Beale’s awful start to this season will cost them a league title. His successor, Philippe Clement, has undone the early season damage. James Tavernier, the captain, has talked about how Clement “raised the standards” and wanted them fitter and training harder.
So what now for Beale? This has been a wounding year and he needs to rest and recharge. He is still young, at 43, but he must decide whether to go again in management or return to coaching, to which he is clearly best suited. Former colleagues talk of his calmness on the training pitch, of him being insightful and clear in his instructions, and of how close he can get to players. He has a serious credibility problem as a manager but still has respect and potential as a coach.
When he left Aston Villa to start out at QPR he said: “I have left big clubs before, Chelsea, Liverpool and São Paulo. I seem to run away from everywhere after a few years.” All of those were on his terms. The worry now is that a managerial career is running away from him.
