‘His long walk to the guillotine’ ‘he was a totally unsuitable candidate’ ‘just atrocious’ Mail columnist goes all in with Beale attack

Gary Keown doesn’t hold back on his feelings for Micky Beale as the Ibrox boss walks towards the guillotine. There are a number of things the Londoner deserves, one is the sack, one he doesn’t deserve is sympathy.

Writing as a columnist Keown has no requirement to build a relationship with the current Ibrox boss, or to be more accurate to compromise his views.

When you get kept in the loop you won’t bite the hand that feeds you, as an outsider Keown’s thoughts on Beale are more in line with the angry outpourings of thousands of bears since their manager raced down the tunnel after losing at home to Celtic.

Beale’s contract, the summer rebuild that he undertook and the lack of obvious successors looks like extending his time in charge at Ibrox but even the Gullible & Deluded weren’t fooled by a painful, laboured 2-0 win away to St Johnstone.

Only the timing of his sacking remains unclear, it will almost certainly be before the end of the year with his shameless trip to the Louden Tavern and Directors Box last October shredding any sympathy for the opportunistic former QPR boss.

After touching on the anger of the last two weeks, in the Daily Mail Keown writes:

That’s the way it is with Beale right now as he continues his long walk to the guillotine. In any case, he deserves no tenderness after what he did to Giovanni van Bronckhorst ahead of being given the job at Ibrox 10 months ago. The Londoner’s current predicament feels more like kismet than cause for a cuddle.

His behaviour back then suggested in the strongest possible terms that he was a totally unsuitable candidate for the job of Rangers manager. And so it has proved.

Going on about integrity and loyalty and why he couldn’t jump ship because he’d brought people to the club before walking out on QPR after four months and 22 games was bad enough. Turning up for that Aberdeen game at Ibrox shortly afterwards and meeting punters in the pub beforehand, when Van Bronckhorst was clearly one bad result away from being given his jotters, was just atrocious.

Turning to the desperate use of stats Keown concluded with:

In stating that he is no great fan of statistics, he did make a point of stating that ‘we’ve got the best defensive record in the league with the least shots on goal and least xG against. At the other end of the pitch, we’ve got the best xG for and the most shots.’

Yes, and you were behind St Mirren and Motherwell in the table with your punters demanding your backside on a plate having escaped from PSV Eindhoven lucky to have shipped just five.

It was alarmingly reminiscent of Mark Warburton stating all those years ago that it was actually all right to be 25 points behind in the title race because ‘if (Celtic) won four games less, they would be 13 ahead and, if we had won one of our games, it would be 10.’

Stats and xG and jumbled-up thinking notwithstanding, in football, as with most things in this mortal coil, you get what you deserve in the end. There are a number of things Beale deserves. The sack is one. Sympathy isn’t.

Real Betis in front of an unforgiving home support on Thursday is the next test for Beale, the first of four home matches in 10 days.