“You can't understand someone until you've walked a mile in their shoes.” That famous quote is why football managers often take exception to pundits who haven’t been involved in the game making comment on such a high pressure job.
But what about when it’s a former player who is passing judgement? That seems to infuriate gaffers even more. Certainly, Record Sport columnist Chris Sutton provoked a reaction after Rangers boss Michael Beale’s savage response to the ex-Celtic striker posing the question of whether he would have been so sporting as to allow the opposition to score a goal the way he did with Partick Thistle if they had been playing against their rivals.
Beale hit back at Sutton, describing him as Chelsea’s worst ever player after revealing he grew up supporting the Blues. Beale isn’t the first, certainly not in the pressure environment of managing one of the Old Firm, to bite back at a former player who picked up the pen after hanging up his boots. Neil Lennon said he was stabbed "in the front, not the back" by former team-mates who criticised him during a disastrous final season at Celtic. Here, in the wake of the Sutton v Beale showdown, we look at other examples where Old Firm managers have bitten back at players turned pundits over criticism in the media.
