Michael Beale has been given an encouraging progress report from the Auchenhowie boffins crunching the numbers on his start as Rangers manager. But the new Ibrox gaffer reckons it's not rocket science when it comes to working out the equation for what makes a successful Old Firm boss.
For a modern coach, the Londoner surprisingly isn’t the type who gets all excited by talk of xG and the rest of the techno-babble data geeks love to spout off about these days. Steven Gerrard’s former sidekick is no dinosaur but he’s well aware that in Glasgow the game can be essentially boiled down to two things, winning and losing.
So far, Beale’s own big bang theory on the game has made all the right noises for the Light Blues, producing five wins and a draw from his first six games in charge. The former QPR boss remains very much in the experimental stage, though, and it took yet another half-time tweak at Tannadice on Sunday for him to perfect his winning formula.
But Beale knows fine well his first real acid test is approaching with Sunday’s Viaplay Cup semi-final with Aberdeen and he’ll have to come up with the right results to satisfy the Ibrox support’s demand for silver. The Rangers boss said: “We’ve scored quite a few goals since I came in.
“I’m not massive on xG, I’ve said that before, but even our nerds in the office tell me that’s in a good place as well. Against Dundee United on Sunday, they weren’t going to walk out the way and let us kick it into the goal.
“I’d say that over the game we wore them down and got what we deserved. Always at half-time when you go back in it’s your job to tweak a couple of things and get into one or two individuals.
“Fair credit to the players for responding. For seven or eight minutes we were very ruthless and scored two goals.
“I’ve asked the boys to play at different speeds and to control the tempo and to make less passing errors. And I was pleased with that.
“You have to remind yourself that the group wasn’t overly confident a month ago so slowly does it. But there are very few teams around the world that can win. Very few teams who genuinely at the start of the season believe they can win the league.
“Maybe two or three teams in every league are like that. We’re fortunate in that we’re a team in this county that when the season starts believe we can win.
“While you’re here you have to take every opportunity to win in games like this at the weekend. For some teams in the Premier League, winning might be getting into Europe.
“Here, you have to win trophies. I’m aware of that and that’s what I’m here to do.
“I’m hoping I can settle my own score in the League Cup. It isn’t pressure, it’s expectation. And if you don’t have any expectations then you’re probably not working at the level you’d like to.”
Beale acknowledges he has Gio van Bronckhorst to thank for the fact he does not inherit a squad stuck in the trial phase when it comes to winning cups. Last year’s Scottish Cup win over Hearts brought an end to their 11-year Hamden hoodoo but Beale has his own score to settle having being part of a coaching staff under Gerrard that tried and failed six times to lead Gers to the top of the national stadium steps.
Beale said: “I have to say, Gio did absolutely fantastic in the cups, all of the cups. The last two visits to Hampden have been positive for Rangers (against Celtic and Hearts) and obviously he did ever so well in the Europa League. Fair credit to Gio and his staff for that.
“Every Rangers manager has to do well in every competition. I’m aware of that. This is my first cup game at the weekend, I’m a very lucky man that it’s a semi-final. The last two visits to Hampden were much better than the ones before.
“I’ve had some good and bad days there with Rangers. We’re playing an opponent that knows us really well, we played them four or five games ago.
“They’ll feel they did well in that game. I was Ibrox when they played Aberdeen and Rangers were clearly the better team. Both games have had goals and clearly for the neutral they will be hoping that continues at the weekend.
“We’re only focused on winning this one first and when we get to the final whoever joins us there that’ll be another challenge for us.”
Among the let downs Beale suffered in his previous role as Gerrard’s right-hand man was the shock defeat to the Dons at the same stage of the competition back in 2018 when Rangers were forced to go with flop striker Umar Sadiq up top in place of suspended talisman Alfredo Morelos. “We dominated the game and lost it to a set-play,” Beale recalled.
“But we’re a much more mature team now. That was a game with a lot of regret for different reasons. We didn’t have a forward that was fit and in a good place when we played the game.
“We dominated but didn’t win in the boxes. And when you play big games you have to win in both boxes. That will be key in the semi-final when the performance is secondary to the result.”
Sunday kicks-off a key week for Beale ahead Wednesday’s Premiership trip to Kilmarnock and a Scottish Cup date with St Johnstone in Perth next weekend. And the Ibrox boss admitted: “In this month we don’t want to be any further behind in the league.
“We want to be in a final, we want to be in the next round of the Scottish Cup and we want to recruit more players to take me towards where I want to go and my vision of where this team needs to be.
“I want to re-energise the team in terms of age. Re-energise it in terms of energy as well and I want to go on some new journeys.”
READ NEXT
