For a couple of years he escaped scrutiny, revelling in the title of being The Brains Behind Gerrard.
Apparently Micky Beale put on the most amazing training sessions, revolutionary. Anyone asked drooled over it, the messengers nodded in agreement.
It seems that the publicity about how well he laid out the bibs and cones got through to the head of the failed Charlton youth team star. Now scruffy and pot-bellied he soaking up the adulation and began to think that he had talent and ability.
Beale got so carried away with the spin that he began to believe that he was the great undiscovered coaching secret, fuelling his delusion that he could step up from being Gary McAllister’s assistant at Murray Park to stopping Celtic and becoming an Ibrox legend.
Ten brutal months that involved four defeats from two different Celtic managers sent Beale back into the world of coach education, yesterday his successor started to demolish the myth alongside Beale’s Murray Park training regime.
Philippe Clement told The National:
There are a lot of things I want to improve in training – how we train, the length of training and more.
There is a lot we can do and hopefully helps reduce the injuries we have. We will train a lot collectively but the players will have physical targets.
Beale wasn’t slow to put the boot into the way that Giovanni van Bronckhorst had the players training and performing, highlighting injuries as a result of inadequate training regimes.
Clement didn’t have to visit the Louden Tavern to get a job, Beale’s results opened the door for the Belgian who is now trashing the legacy of the Brains Behind Gerrard.
Blaming it all on the guy before you, eh? Very original…. reminds me of the Kruschev story. He left Brezhnev two letters, to be opened only when things go horribly wrong. The first time it all goes horribly wrong, he opens the first letter. It says ‘blame it all on me’. It worked like a charm. The next time it all goes horribly wrong, he opens the second letter. All it says is ‘sit down, write two letters’….
The moral of that story is that blaming it all on the guy before you only works once and Clement has used that tactic before the ink on his contract has dried. This could get interesting quite quickly.
It’s very easy for the incoming manager to blame the previous one as if there was no midden to clear up they’d still very much be there…
I remember Lennon coming in for his first spell after Mowbray and say along the lines of – “Projects – Fcuk projects, I want players and players the day before tomorrow not fcukin projects”
Unfortunately Pistol ‘poker’ Pete didnae Listen !
“…but the players will have physical targets.”
If Clement had been manager instead of Beale,
would he have managed Morelos and Kent into better players?
Beale simply failed to coach to manage them properly – to the point where
Morelos was just taking the p!ss with his weight, yet he still got games!
Yes, it will be facsinating to watch how Clement plugs the holes in the
sinking sevco ship. Wacamole anyone? 🙂
IF he wins the LC and comes second in the league, that would be a
decent return for this ibrox car crash season, IMO.
[But the delightful, foaming bears might not settle for that?]
So, 4 to zero, a fine start. Let’s not discount this Chap. He is nobody’s mug, but, as long as We continue on our way we win, We win, We win and so on and so forth. We will drop points along the way, so will they. Big bounce for new management today, lot of work for Progress needed.
Not much work for a team from Luxembourg called Progress needed !