The confidence in Michael Beale

[mitre_mouldmaster 21,509]

Just now, The Dude said:

That’s why using the football clubs accounts rather than the group makes more sense. But then you knew that. 

Nope, using the groups accounts makes more sense as I know from experience that there is absolutely no guarantee that the structure of our 'club expenses' will be the same as their 'club expenses'.

Without digging into it in detail, I know that comparing both sets of accounts at the top level will ensure that I am not discounting the Women's teams costs from Celtic, yet including them from Rangers.

Regardless, its a pointless argument without knowing the staffing costs of the mens playing staff, which is the only relevant argument, and we just dont have this information.

[Jimfanciesthedude 24,778]

17 minutes ago, mitre_mouldmaster said:

I would probably think that in half a season, dropping points in 2 games would likely be too early to start lobbing railings at the front gate demanding a change of manager.

My whole kinda point has been about the massive over the top reactions and not being fucked with them at all, so im no really sure how else you expected me to answer this.

What your thoughts? Unless we win the first game of the season by 5 goals and lead the table on goal difference, should we just sack him then?

Tbf my original budget point used the example of us drawing with the tarriers at ibrox, giving them a good game, but being 6-9 points behind at xmas

Now allowing for a tarrier draw or defeat outside the OF game (like last season) that means wed have dropped points in 3 or 4 games against teams with budgets a fraction of ours 

So my original question, which I think only OrangeRab answered, was that, will that be down to the tarriers spending more than us, or down to the players and management 

The season of seville we dropped points in 8 games outwith the OF games, 4 under gerrard and 4 under Gio, obviously we know the OF results as well

But never once that season was the tarriers spending multi millipnstin summer and in jan ever brought up to defend our shitty form

Now we have the potential excuse that if rodgers spends more than beale then that excuses beale if he drops points ourwith OF games

Why the difference now

[OrangeRab 2,906]

I think most people would agree that if they didn’t spend like they did in that summer and Jan then they wouldn’t have accumulated as many points?

Can’t speak for others but I definitely thought that if we’d had an extra 20 million to spend we would have had more points. We had that dreadful spell after January where we had Itten, Arfield, Diallo playing/starting a lot of matches as well as guys like McGregor needing upgraded.

 

[mitre_mouldmaster 21,509]

5 minutes ago, Jimbeamjunior said:

Tbf my original budget point used the example of us drawing with the tarriers at ibrox, giving them a good game, but being 6-9 points behind at xmas

Now allowing for a tarrier draw or defeat outside the OF game (like last season) that means wed have dropped points in 3 or 4 games against teams with budgets a fraction of ours 

So my original question, which I think only OrangeRab answered, was that, will that be down to the tarriers spending more than us, or down to the players and management 

The season of seville we dropped points in 8 games outwith the OF games, 4 under gerrard and 4 under Gio, obviously we know the OF results as well

But never once that season was the tarriers spending multi millipnstin summer and in jan ever brought up to defend our shitty form

Now we have the potential excuse that if rodgers spends more than beale then that excuses beale if he drops points ourwith OF games

Why the difference now

I think I answered it too, but you may have got bored a quarter of the way through my post to be fair.

I dont think their spending was ever brought up as an excuse for our shitty from. What they spend has no direct input into the result between us and Motherwell for instance.

The amount they spent was however brought up plenty and highlighted as a counter to the 'Wonderful Ange' shite in the news. People were always commenting that he spent the best part of £30m.

The defence was certainly there at the time for Gerrard a couple of seasons ago when he won the league and was basically given fuck all budget. I think Bacuna was our biggest signing. It was however countered with his reluctance to sell to fund transfers.

Their unreal form in the league was certainly brought up as an excuse for Gio, so was the horrible injury occurrence. It was not a big enough excuse to excuse the fucking minging form that we were in though. The team looked devoid of any creativity, the manager was standing on the sidelines completely lifeless and we were capitulating in games with barely a whimper.

It wasnt just the dropping of points, it was the manner in which it was happening. Although he might have had excuses, they were not enough to cover what we were seeing.

When it comes to sacking a manager, you cant say in advance of what the circumstances will be. Will it be because of 10, 12 or 16 points dropped? Who knows, depends what else is happening. Will he get sacked if we dont win anything this year? Who knows? If we are shite, probably, if we are unlucky, probably not!

The circumstances matter.

[Jimfanciesthedude 24,778]

10 minutes ago, mitre_mouldmaster said:

. It was not a big enough excuse to excuse the fucking minging form that we were in though. The team looked devoid of any creativity, the manager was standing on the sidelines completely lifeless and we were capitulating in games with barely a whimper..

Tbh i get that as it was fucking honking, however as a few of us said at the time it was reminiscent of gerrard pre covid when arguably the shutdown saved him, the players were a disgrace and by the time we were dropping points it was with a squad that pretty much all of us wanted rid of bar one or two, 

As i said before 6months isnt enough for a manger to build his own team, especially in 6 months where your rivals have dropped 3 points and smashing everyone else in sight

In the whole of 2022 they dropped 9 points, 4 of them when the league was done, thats an unprecedented level of form that even our best teams over the years would have struggled to keep up with

If they start the season like that again, then while i think it would be unfair on beale, if he is behind them at xmas by 6-9 pts like i said, there would need to be a big amount of defence put up for him to not be threatened with the sack

And tbh i dont think it will be that bad, and i think losing the fat aussie will have helped beale

[SIRB_72 4,074]

15 minutes ago, OrangeRab said:

I think most people would agree that if they didn’t spend like they did in that summer and Jan then they wouldn’t have accumulated as many points?

Can’t speak for others but I definitely thought that if we’d had an extra 20 million to spend we would have had more points. We had that dreadful spell after January where we had Itten, Arfield, Diallo playing/starting a lot of matches as well as guys like McGregor needing upgraded.

 

In the last 4 windows (from summer 2021) celtic's net spend is around 5.5 million and according to Keiran Maguire their wage budget rose 7 million.

Our net transfer is around -26 million but our wage budget has also increased 7 million pound.

In 2021 we had an established squad who had just won the league unbeaten. The club made (in hindsight) a bad decision by keeping the squad together which determined how much money we spent. We wouldn't have been able to spend an extra 20 million unless we got rid of Aribo, Kent and Morelos over the next 12 months which we should have but very few were saying that in summer '21. 

celtic didnt just find this money behind the back of the couch. They sold players and had to replace them which is why spent so much money. We would have done the same if we sold Aribo, Morelos and Kent - like we did when we sold Bassey and Patterson to varying degrees of success.

Last season our wage budget was 54/55 million and I cant see it dropping too much. If we can't build a team to win in Scotland with that much, regardless if celtic spend an extra 5-6 million on wages then we might as well give up the ghost.

Bad decisions stopped us winning the league and cups, not budgets.

[OrangeRab 2,906]

11 minutes ago, SIRB_72 said:

In the last 4 windows (from summer 2021) celtic's net spend is around 5.5 million and according to Keiran Maguire their wage budget rose 7 million.

Our net transfer is around -26 million but our wage budget has also increased 7 million pound.

In 2021 we had an established squad who had just won the league unbeaten. The club made (in hindsight) a bad decision by keeping the squad together which determined how much money we spent. We wouldn't have been able to spend an extra 20 million unless we got rid of Aribo, Kent and Morelos over the next 12 months which we should have but very few were saying that in summer '21. 

celtic didnt just find this money behind the back of the couch. They sold players and had to replace them which is why spent so much money. We would have done the same if we sold Aribo, Morelos and Kent - like we did when we sold Bassey and Patterson to varying degrees of success.

Last season our wage budget was 54/55 million and I cant see it dropping too much. If we can't build a team to win in Scotland with that much, regardless if celtic spend an extra 5-6 million on wages then we might as well give up the ghost.

Bad decisions stopped us winning the league and cups, not budgets.

Fully aware how they funded it with player sales. I’m not talking about net either. Just a simple statement that if we had more to spend we might have got more points. In the same way they did. We absolutely need to be selling players to fund that.

We can build a team that beats most of the dross week in week out. So can celtic. But can having extra money help you do it more often. Yes

[The Dude 20,026]

1 hour ago, mitre_mouldmaster said:

Nope, using the groups accounts makes more sense as I know from experience that there is absolutely no guarantee that the structure of our 'club expenses' will be the same as their 'club expenses'.

Without digging into it in detail, I know that comparing both sets of accounts at the top level will ensure that I am not discounting the Women's teams costs from Celtic, yet including them from Rangers.

Regardless, its a pointless argument without knowing the staffing costs of the mens playing staff, which is the only relevant argument, and we just dont have this information.

There isn’t much variance (if any) in what goes under ‘staff costs’. 

[Jimfanciesthedude 24,778]

15 minutes ago, OrangeRab said:

Fully aware how they funded it with player sales. I’m not talking about net either. Just a simple statement that if we had more to spend we might have got more points. In the same way they did. We absolutely need to be selling players to fund that.

We can build a team that beats most of the dross week in week out. So can celtic. But can having extra money help you do it more often. Yes

Not really, wages maybe but fees isnt guaranteed, as i said earlier in the thread our 7mill signing was out performed by a freebie

Infact our 4 most productive players last year cost less than what we paid for lammers just there

[OrangeRab 2,906]

23 minutes ago, Jimbeamjunior said:

Not really, wages maybe but fees isnt guaranteed, as i said earlier in the thread our 7mill signing was out performed by a freebie

Infact our 4 most productive players last year cost less than what we paid for lammers just there

We’re back to square one 😭. Yes I know that a 100million pound player isn’t guaranteed to be better than a 1million pound player. But having money to spend makes it more likely on average that you sign a better player. That’s why harry kane is going to go for 70+ million and Lammers isn’t. 

Im not reinventing the wheel here ffs. It’s not even a debatable point.

If money/budget doesn’t matter. Why don’t we just pack it in and only sign players on free from now on. That’s basically what you’re saying-if we don’t spend another penny on player fees it won’t lower our chances of winning the title 

[SIRB_72 4,074]

1 hour ago, OrangeRab said:

Fully aware how they funded it with player sales. I’m not talking about net either. Just a simple statement that if we had more to spend we might have got more points. In the same way they did. We absolutely need to be selling players to fund that.

We can build a team that beats most of the dross week in week out. So can celtic. But can having extra money help you do it more often. Yes

But this is why net matters. It's easier to say celtic spent 56/57 million pound in the last two seasons and then say if we spent 20 million pound we'd have a better chance when it isn't feasible, nor would it be for celtic now.

Is the point that we should spend more? Or just that more money wins? The latter up here doesnt really matter when the difference between us and celtic is half of Hearts' budget.

 

[Jimfanciesthedude 24,778]

38 minutes ago, OrangeRab said:

We’re back to square one 😭. Yes I know that a 100million pound player isn’t guaranteed to be better than a 1million pound player. But having money to spend makes it more likely on average that you sign a better player. That’s why harry kane is going to go for 70+ million and Lammers isn’t. 

Im not reinventing the wheel here ffs. It’s not even a debatable point.

If money/budget doesn’t matter. Why don’t we just pack it in and only sign players on free from now on. That’s basically what you’re saying-if we don’t spend another penny on player fees it won’t lower our chances of winning the title 

Of course budget matters, but its not as black and white as saying "they spent 10mill more than us, ao they should be better" etc

And comparing kane and lammers is fucking stupid, but try comparing kent and jota, who was the better left winger for the same price, 

The argument was that if Rodgers spends more then it should give Beale leeway, but that's not always the case as they could blow their money on shite or we could find a few cheap gems (like cantwell) 

[OrangeRab 2,906]

13 minutes ago, SIRB_72 said:

But this is why net matters. It's easier to say celtic spent 56/57 million pound in the last two seasons and then say if we spent 20 million pound we'd have a better chance when it isn't feasible, nor would it be for celtic now.

Is the point that we should spend more? Or just that more money wins? The latter up here doesnt really matter when the difference between us and celtic is half of Hearts' budget.

 

Yep I think we’re talking about different points. Net absolutely matters-that’s what we’re tied to as we have to balance the books. When spending large parts of our kitty, focus has to be on the return on that. Player trading model blah blah. That’s why I said that when thinking about Tillman it would have been a gross outlay of 5million but net it probably would have been an earner (hence why Bayern wanted him to stay). They’ve broadly done this better than us meaning they can spend more because their takings have been more so net spends end up being similar.

 

 

[OrangeRab 2,906]

20 minutes ago, Jimbeamjunior said:

Of course budget matters, but its not as black and white as saying "they spent 10mill more than us, ao they should be better" etc

And comparing kane and lammers is fucking stupid, but try comparing kent and jota, who was the better left winger for the same price, 

The argument was that if Rodgers spends more then it should give Beale leeway, but that's not always the case as they could blow their money on shite or we could find a few cheap gems (like cantwell) 

Yep agreed. The original argument made was that it was black and white! That if we don’t win the league/are behind celtic then Beale gets fired.

I’m saying it’s not and that context matters.  Recruitment, budget, play style, squad morale, fitness, points (have we been good and put up a points total that would win it most years but they’ve been better).

And that’s why Gio was fired and Beale might not be. Because we were on course for consecutive points totals that wouldn’t have won the league on a “typical year”, our recruitment wasn’t good, the fitness was poor, the play style was turgid, the player effort looked shite and we had a load of injuries.

[Jimfanciesthedude 24,778]

8 hours ago, OrangeRab said:

Yep agreed. The original argument made was that it was black and white! That if we don’t win the league/are behind celtic then Beale gets fired.

I’m saying it’s not and that context matters.  Recruitment, budget, play style, squad morale, fitness, points (have we been good and put up a points total that would win it most years but they’ve been better).

And that’s why Gio was fired and Beale might not be. Because we were on course for consecutive points totals that wouldn’t have won the league on a “typical year”, our recruitment wasn’t good, the fitness was poor, the play style was turgid, the player effort looked shite and we had a load of injuries.

No the original debate started when the tarriers spending more than us was given as a potential excuse for Beale not winning anything, and i asked why given we could easily match the tarriers in the OF games but have worse results against the jobbers than they will

So if Beale starts dropping pointd to the livis, st mirrens etc, why will rodgers spending more money than Beale be allowed as some form of excuse? 

[OrangeRab 2,906]

1 hour ago, Jimbeamjunior said:

No the original debate started when the tarriers spending more than us was given as a potential excuse for Beale not winning anything, and i asked why given we could easily match the tarriers in the OF games but have worse results against the jobbers than they will

So if Beale starts dropping pointd to the livis, st mirrens etc, why will rodgers spending more money than Beale be allowed as some form of excuse? 

Easier to use an extreme example to show why context matters 

Scenario A: Beale splits the OF hth and wins every game except one draw to Livi. We finish on 106 points.

Scenario B: Beale splits the OF hth and loses/draws a bunch more games to finish on 84 points (like Gio was on track).

it’s clear that 106 is a better performance than 84?

But what if in scenario A celtic had won all their other games. They finish on 108 and we’ve lost the league?

And scenario B, celtic get Lennon part 2 and finish on 80 points. We win the league. 

Objectively Beale did better in scenario A right? Hence the the original posters “winning is all that matters. Beale will be sacked if he can’t win” brigade isn’t true when assessing how a manager has done. It’s not making excuses for him. A title race is relative, so the context of how the other team does matters. (And how they spend is an input to how they are expected to do).

So that’s context around points+spending but context around recruitment, play style, fitness, injuries, player trading, youth development etc also matter in assessing whether to give a manager more time.

 

[Jimfanciesthedude 24,778]

3 hours ago, OrangeRab said:

Easier to use an extreme example to show why context matters 

Scenario A: Beale splits the OF hth and wins every game except one draw to Livi. We finish on 106 points.

Scenario B: Beale splits the OF hth and loses/draws a bunch more games to finish on 84 points (like Gio was on track).

it’s clear that 106 is a better performance than 84?

But what if in scenario A celtic had won all their other games. They finish on 108 and we’ve lost the league?

And scenario B, celtic get Lennon part 2 and finish on 80 points. We win the league. 

Objectively Beale did better in scenario A right? Hence the the original posters “winning is all that matters. Beale will be sacked if he can’t win” brigade isn’t true when assessing how a manager has done. It’s not making excuses for him. A title race is relative, so the context of how the other team does matters. (And how they spend is an input to how they are expected to do).

So that’s context around points+spending but context around recruitment, play style, fitness, injuries, player trading, youth development etc also matter in assessing whether to give a manager more time.

 

For a start in your scenario we'd finish on 104 pts as it would be 5 games where we dropped 2pts a game

But again that wasnt the scenario because the likely hood of it happening is slim to none

I'll rephrase the original piece then

If the tarriers have the same start to the season as the did last time (dropped 3 points out of 45) how far away are we allowed to be before the excuses don't wash

If we are using budgets, then given this will be our biggest budget in recent times, is 6pts behind acceptable? 3? 9?

And im only using budget here because stuff like injuries, performances etc can all be traced back to budget (spend more have more players to covet injury or poor form players) 

[OrangeRab 2,906]

19 minutes ago, Jimbeamjunior said:

For a start in your scenario we'd finish on 104 pts as it would be 5 games where we dropped 2pts a game

But again that wasnt the scenario because the likely hood of it happening is slim to none

I'll rephrase the original piece then

If the tarriers have the same start to the season as the did last time (dropped 3 points out of 45) how far away are we allowed to be before the excuses don't wash

If we are using budgets, then given this will be our biggest budget in recent times, is 6pts behind acceptable? 3? 9?

And im only using budget here because stuff like injuries, performances etc can all be traced back to budget (spend more have more players to covet injury or poor form players) 

Sorry meant 106. Split the OF and draw one vs dross. Again you’re trying to make it black and white. There’s no magic number. I’m just saying you can’t make the statement now, as others were, that if we are behind by Xmas or don’t win the league then Beale gets sacked.

It’s not black and white. It might well be the case he should get sacked. You might even say he probably should if we had to guess today (given budgets might be similar etc). But we don’t..

There might be reasons in the future why he shouldn’t. (Such as Rodger’s gets given a war chest, or Beale signs a bunch of promising players who don’t win the first game but then go unbeaten etc etc etc)

Gio wasnt just sacked because he was behind. He was sacked because his points trajectory wasn’t good enough to win the league in an average year. Ie not even against a good celtic team.

On top of that the recruitment wasn’t a success, injuries, fitness, play style etc. and yes some of that might be horrendous luck for him as well as inherited problems

[Jimfanciesthedude 24,778]

19 minutes ago, OrangeRab said:

Sorry meant 106. Split the OF and draw one vs dross. Again you’re trying to make it black and white. There’s no magic number. I’m just saying you can’t make the statement now, as others were, that if we are behind by Xmas or don’t win the league then Beale gets sacked.

It’s not black and white. It might well be the case he should get sacked. You might even say he probably should if we had to guess today (given budgets might be similar etc). But we don’t..

There might be reasons in the future why he shouldn’t. (Such as Rodger’s gets given a war chest, or Beale signs a bunch of promising players who don’t win the first game but then go unbeaten etc etc etc)

Gio wasnt just sacked because he was behind. He was sacked because his points trajectory wasn’t good enough to win the league in an average year. Ie not even against a good celtic team.

On top of that the recruitment wasn’t a success, injuries, fitness, play style etc. and yes some of that might be horrendous luck for him as well as inherited problems

While gios points trajectory was low, i genuinely cannot remember a Rangers team who would have kept up with the 2022 version of the tarriers, hell even so far this year they have only dropped points when it didnt matter

Using points trajectory is dangerous as the fixtures can have been shite or good (take gerrards before he left, not one of sheep, hibs, hearts, livi and the tarriers away from home in his 13 games before he left) last season when we sacked gio he had been to the tarriers, hearts, hibs, livi, and would have been at the sheep had it not been postponed, thats an awful run of fixtures and we actually did well at them mind you

But anyway the debate has been done, imo given his budget this season and the seemingly big overhaul he's got or will have, if we are out of the title race by xmas there should be no excuses

[OrangeRab 2,906]

49 minutes ago, Jimbeamjunior said:

While gios points trajectory was low, i genuinely cannot remember a Rangers team who would have kept up with the 2022 version of the tarriers, hell even so far this year they have only dropped points when it didnt matter

Using points trajectory is dangerous as the fixtures can have been shite or good (take gerrards before he left, not one of sheep, hibs, hearts, livi and the tarriers away from home in his 13 games before he left) last season when we sacked gio he had been to the tarriers, hearts, hibs, livi, and would have been at the sheep had it not been postponed, thats an awful run of fixtures and we actually did well at them mind you

But anyway the debate has been done, imo given his budget this season and the seemingly big overhaul he's got or will have, if we are out of the title race by xmas there should be no excuses

Yep I think we agree. It’s not even as black and white as points trajectory. You have to take into account fixtures etc as you said. Not all 3 points are equal.

It’s all about context. Also agreed not many Rangers teams would have kept up with 2022 celtic. So if you had a manager who was only 1 point behind - you wouldn’t sack them!

[bluenoz 31,087]

 

[Ace 3,556]

6 hours ago, bluenoz said:

 

Watched this whole interview and was interested to hear his reasoning for picking the players he's signed.

There was a solid plan plan behind his thinking and I feel more confident about the upcoming season, particularly if he gets the rest of his signings too 

[AGC123 1,219]

On 28/06/2023 at 19:48, SIRB_72 said:

In the last 4 windows (from summer 2021) celtic's net spend is around 5.5 million and according to Keiran Maguire their wage budget rose 7 million.

Our net transfer is around -26 million but our wage budget has also increased 7 million pound.

In 2021 we had an established squad who had just won the league unbeaten. The club made (in hindsight) a bad decision by keeping the squad together which determined how much money we spent. We wouldn't have been able to spend an extra 20 million unless we got rid of Aribo, Kent and Morelos over the next 12 months which we should have but very few were saying that in summer '21. 

celtic didnt just find this money behind the back of the couch. They sold players and had to replace them which is why spent so much money. We would have done the same if we sold Aribo, Morelos and Kent - like we did when we sold Bassey and Patterson to varying degrees of success.

Last season our wage budget was 54/55 million and I cant see it dropping too much. If we can't build a team to win in Scotland with that much, regardless if celtic spend an extra 5-6 million on wages then we might as well give up the ghost.

Bad decisions stopped us winning the league and cups, not budgets.

I totally get and agree with the monumental fuck up that was not selling key assets at the end of that season. But in hind site you’d take that euro run any day. No getting away that was massively fortunate for the board. For the glory, that’s the reason it was the correct decision for me. However unexpectedly fortunate it turned out to be.     

[maverick1200 2,842]

23 hours ago, Ace said:

Watched this whole interview and was interested to hear his reasoning for picking the players he's signed.

There was a solid plan plan behind his thinking and I feel more confident about the upcoming season, particularly if he gets the rest of his signings too 

I read the interview because of the overview he gave of the new signings. He definitely has a plan, the signings have been carefully thought through. We look like we'll have some balance too as he said he was keen on signing some left footers. 

I can't wait to see us in action now, especially, like you said if we get all the players we're interested in sign. 

Fingers crossed we can get rid of the deadwood. 

[graeme_4 34,958]

Not got much tbh. No idea what he’s trying to do after a pre-season and the first league game. Look rudderless.