What's luck got to do with it? Well, as a matter of fact, where Michael Beale and Ange Postecoglou are concerned, a great deal actually. Let’s be brutally blunt. It wasn’t all that long ago that fans of Rangers and Celtic would have struggled to pick either man out of an identity parade.
And yet fate and good fortune have conspired to place both of them on either side of Scottish football’s great divide at a truly fascinating moment in time. What’s luck got to do with it? Well, had Eddie Howe’s feet not turned to ice at the thought of taking on the task of rebuilding Celtic then Postecoglou would probably still be ‘playing his football’ on the other side of the planet rather than bringing half the Far East with him to Glasgow.
And, had Beale not been handpicked by Steven Gerrard to become part of the Scouser’s backroom team at Ibrox then he’d have been nowhere near the top job when the axe came down on Giovanni van Bronckhorst just a couple of months ago. But while both men have benefited hugely from circumstance in order to get to where they now are, it’s beginning to feel as if the lucky ones in all of this might be the two clubs themselves.
