Mick Beale’s Rangers just keep on winning.
The football is not always thrilling, there are nagging concerns over a number of key positions, and they are far from the finished article. But the results, as they say, speak for themselves. And they speak about a man who, after replacing Giovanni van Bronckhorst on the Ibrox bench, has picked up and dusted off a team with confidence as brittle as ten-year old Taffee; instilling a spirit and a spine not seen since Steven Gerrard’s heydey.
Saturday’s 2-1 triumph over Ross County was Rangers’ 11th win in 12 games. The sample size is small, of course, but Beale currently boasts a better win rate (nearly 92 per cent) than any other permanent head coach in the club’s 150-year history.
Scott Parker, linked with the Gers job before Beale’s appointment via Give Me Sport, could only dream of such statistics. His win rate since taking over at Club Brugge, in contrast, stands at a miserable 16 per cent.
Yes, defeats have been in short supply too – four draws in the Englishman’s six games thus far. But the fact remains that, after appointing the former Fulham and Bournemouth boss on New Years’ Eve, Club Brugge have drifted to 21 points off top spot; their hopes of retaining the Jupiler League title now about as likely as Les Dennis being cast as the new Aquaman.
Rangers chose Mick Beale over Scott Parker
“Parker keeps looking (for solutions),” former Belgium international Marc Degryse tells HLN following the weekend’s 0-0 draw at Royal Antwerp. “He again made five substitutions that I don’t understand all.
“Noa Lang (Brugge’s most talented player) didn’t do badly as a false nine. But if he drops back and asks for the ball, you have no one in attack anymore.”
“The Club Brugge defence resembles a Rubik’s cube. Parker keeps shifting and turning, and the choices are always wrong,” reporter Peter Vandenbempt tells Sporza. “The mistakes piled up, and wrong choices were also made offensively.
“And what happened to (star midfielder Raphael) Onyedika? In the first months of the season, he was nothing short of sensational. He’s unrecognisable now, just like the whole team.”
Parker insisted at his post-match press conference that he was ‘satisfied’ by the nature of that goalless draw at the Bosuilstadion. An opinion that does not appear to be shared by many at the stumbling Jupiler League champions, the crown slipping from Club Brugge heads.
Mick Beale wasted no time in aligning himself to Rangers’ values; a club where success is not only expected but demanded. Parker, questions already being asked about his future, could do worse than to take a leaf out of Beale’s book.
