Beale sends out ominous warning over squad cuts

Micky Beale has sent out a warning that he will be cutting his squad in the summer.

Transfer guru Ross Wilson has failed to shift the deadwood over the last couple of transfer windows with the wage bill massively bloated by non-contributors.

Ryan Kent and Alfredo Morelos are attracting most headlines as they prepare to walk away at the end of the season but there are a number of issues that have been kicked into touch.

Last summer John Souttar, Rabbi Matondo and Ridvan Yilmaz were brought in on long term contracts with Beale only getting a few cameo appearances out of Matondo as the wage bill is drained.

Speaking to the Daily Record Beale admitted:

We have too many players in my opinion. There’s a reason we’ve carried one or two more, we’ve had injury problems and we’ve had to supplement that. When I say we have too many, we have young players out on loan as well.

So when pre-season starts they’re all back in the building. I want all the players to have clarity in their role in the squad and it’s difficult the more players you have.

If I look at the top teams in the top leagues, like Arsenal at the minute, they have the most consistent eleven and I know from being at Liverpool when they won that was the case as well. When we won the league we had a core of seven or eight that play.

In November Beale inherited John Lundstram, Glen Kamara, Ryan Jack, Scot Arfield, Matondo, Steve Davis, James Sands, Alex Lowry, Tom Lawrence, Malik Tilman and Ianis Hagi.

His first transfer moves were to bring in midfielders Todd Cantwell and Nicolas Raskin with Ross Wilson managing to dump Charlie McCann on Forest Green Rovers.

Those comments sound ominous for Jack and Arfield who are out of contract in three months time.

Beale does enjoy dropping in his Liverpool connection, his last job at the club was in charge of the u-5 to u-11 Academy, quite a demotion compared to a brief spell as u-23 coach, not many coaches would accept such a drop in status.

On 22 September 2017 Liverpool announced:

The former Reds U23s manager has rejoined the staff in Kirkby following a spell with Brazilian side Sao Paulo, and will work primarily with the U5 to U11 age groups.

Beale lasted 12 matches as assistant manager of Sao Paulo, apparently he was the brains of the management team.