Michael Beale: 'Rookie boss back on familiar ground, but demands are very different'

Can Beale (right) rebuild the Rangers squad along with sporting director Ross Wilson?

Michael Beale is a hard man to read. Just over a month ago, he spoke about how committed he was to his job as manager of QPR, how loyalty demanded that he reject the advances of Wolves in the Premier League for the "journey" in London.

"Everyone is clear that my future is here at QPR," he said in late October. "I'm 100% convinced it's the place to be." He pointed out that the people close to him knew what he wanted to achieve with the club he joined in the summer, the place that gave him his first shot at management after an impressive career in coaching, not least with Rangers under Steven Gerrard.

"I just didn't feel it was the right time," he continued. "I'd invited a lot of players to come and join the club and I had to sell the project to them. So it was important that I see that through… There's a loyalty not just to the football club but to the people inside - the young players and the staff you brought on the journey."

All QPR fans would have breathed a major sigh of relief. The club was sitting top of the Championship when Beale recommitted to them.

To turn down the Premier League was an impressive display of passion for the club and the supporters loved him for it. Then QPR drew one game and lost four. First in the Championship became seventh.

Suddenly, his conviction that QPR was the place to be went left when his old club picked up the phone and offered him a return to Glasgow. The 'journey' ended at 22 games.

Rangers fans sold on the appointment may look at Beale as a man so in love with the club that he's prepared to give up a shot at the Premier League to return to Scotland. Through that prism, it's a quite a thing.

QPR fans are entitled to look on him in an entirely different context given how empty his words last month turned out to be.

Either way, he's here. Had you sat down with Rangers fans a week after last season ended with a near-miss in the Europa League final and a first triumph in the Scottish Cup in a dozen years and told them they'd have a new manager by the end of the year the chances are you'd have been met with some disbelieving looks.

Had you then said that Giovanni van Bronckhorst's replacement would be a rookie whose managerial career consisted of just nine wins in the second tier of English football, a novice whose five most recent results in the Championship featured a draw against Norwich and four losses to Birmingham, West Brom, Huddersfield and Coventry (as well as earlier losses to Luton, Swansea, Blackpool and Blackburn) then things might have got interesting.

In bringing Beale to Ibrox in the hope of sparking a revival, the Rangers board know he can coach, based on his years at the club with Gerrard, but can he manage? The two jobs are entirely different, one existing in the margins, the other in the full and unforgiving glare.

Beale won nine of his 22 games in charge of QPR

Laying on imaginative training sessions and devising clever game plans is a coach's lot and Beale has a fine reputation in that world, but 22 games - including an EFL Cup exit to League One Charlton - is a paper thin CV in the world he's about to move into.

The argument could be made that Gerrard was also a rookie with zero games as a manager and that he went on to win the Premiership. True, but Gerrard's status bought him time, a luxury that wasn't extended to Van Bronckhorst and will not be given to Beale either.

Gerrard took three years to win a trophy and won only one of nine domestic competitions. His board stuck by him. By comparison, Van Bronckhorst took the club to a European final, won a Scottish Cup, got them into the Champions League.

The Dutchman also did stellar work in developing Calvin Bassey, a player subsequently sold for more than £20m. Bassey had started about half of Rangers games in the last months of Gerrard's reign. It was Van Bronckhorst who turned him into a valuable asset.

All of those accomplishments - a trophy, kudos and cash - didn't buy the former manager time when things started to go wrong this season. Beale has now entered that same brutal terrain.

At least he knows the rules of engagement. Gerrard got the kind of latitude that no other Rangers manager is ever likely to get. Beale needs to transform things at Ibrox and he needs to do it quickly.

This Rangers squad is old in too many places and seemingly disinterested in too many places. A number of players have dialled it in for too long. A few are coasting. Some have looked like they've mentally left the building. Others have been out injured. That was a small part of the reason why Van Bronckhorst lost his job. He wasn't blessed with good luck on that front.

If Beale is what the Rangers board hope he is, then his coaching might turn around a few of these characters, might get Ryan Kent contributing substantial performances rather than throwing shapes for 90 minutes, might get inside Alfredo Morelos' head, might promote younger players and get the team playing with a bit of pace and vigour.

Everything is taken on trust, because there's little track record to speak of. Even if he does re-energise the players he has, he needs others to mount a challenge to Celtic. And he needs a budget for that. How much money has he got to play with? It's a key question.

Ange Postecoglou changed Celtic by bringing in masses of energy and cleverness. The club funded it all largely on the back of the sale of two players - Odsonne Edouard and Kristoffer Ajer. Rangers really don't have any marketable assets anymore. They've sold them all.

That fiscal prudence has put them in a stable place financially and it's a significant thing. However, the big picture doesn't half get obscured when you're toiling in the league and your rivals are threatening to disappear over the horizon. A healthy balance sheet didn't save Van Bronckhorst

At QPR, Beale talked about loyalty, integrity and the importance of the journey, then he walked. Twenty-two games is a warm-up routine, not a sign of his worth. The truth is that his time as a manager only really starts now.