Micky Beale has driven a massive wedge between himself and the Ibrox dressing room by delivering a scathing post-match assessment following the 1-0 win over Motherwell today.
It was another tough watch for the angry bears, despite scraping a win the fans that stayed till the final whistle booed the players off the park in what is starting to become a club tradition.
As usual Beale made changes to his starting side, incredibly Scott Wright came into the side for his first start of the season after he pulled out of a move to Turkey.
Fall guy Cyriel Dessers replaced Kemar Roofe in attack and scored the only goal of the game when a shot from Rabbi Matondo hit his leg and found the net.
There is no pattern to the play which is understandable since there are so many changes to the side, after starting the season without wingers Matondo has found himself back in favour but is now facing a lengthy spell out injured due to a knee injury.
Another laboured 90 minutes provided a hard watch for the fans, incredibly, after the match the guy responsible for the performance opted to put the blame on the players that he coached and selected.
Beale is getting by game by game, the fans, players, management and media know that the end isn’t far away with today’s media performance taking him significantly closer to the end of his tenure.
QUESTION: You cut a frustrated figure during the last ten minutes there?
BEALE: From the first minute onwards I was unhappy with the team today. The unforced errors with the ball were unacceptable for players playing here. That performance today was a really poor one.
It was a good goal, the goal was something we worked on with trying to overload in the middle with the width, and I thought it was well-worked. But outside of that some of our play was so poor against a team which was in a good place and is well-organised and came here with a plan. They executed their plan better than us because we constantly turned the ball over and left ourselves vulnerable.
Losing Rabbi to injury – and it doesn’t look like a good one – didn’t help us, that’s for sure because we were few and far in our team of players like that today who could outplay and dribble with the ball.
The back three gave us some stability and possession and balance behind the ball and I thought those three played well and John Lundstram in front, and Jack [Butland]. But in terms of a performance that is well below what the players expect, I expect, the fans expect. We got away with one today. I don’t want to take anything away from Motherwell they came here and played well I’m sure Stuart will take a lot from the game. But for me that’s well below what I am looking for from this team.
QUESTION: Were you angry with the players after?
BEALE: We’ve had honest words, yes.
QUESTION: Is that the style of football that you want your team to play?
BEALE: Listen, I have just sat here and said I want us to play better football. The teams that I have play better football than that and I am sitting here being honest.
Sima and Roofe came into today’s game with niggles and we need them for Wednesday. So the reality is that we had on the pitch what we had and we had to do something to get a result today, because we weren’t very good. I will leave it there with that.
On Thursday night we come off over the moon with the second half and the way we played against a better team than we played today. I say that with all respect, it’s not my view that Betis are a better team than Motherwell – it would be everybody’s view.
So I can’t understand why, at 10 o’clock Thursday you walk off the pitch with that feeling after playing that way. And then turning in the performance we did today. That’s my question to the group and to me and my staff. That performance today wasn’t good enough, but I don’t want to go down that road.
I have more insight than any one into the schedule we have coming up. We have a quarter final on Wednesday and it would be reckless of me to put those two out on the pitch today with that in mind.
