Beale Has Proved Good At Running His Mouth. We’ll See What Else He’s Got.

Michael Beale. What a start he’s made as Ibrox gaffer. He’s closed the gap just by opening his gob. He has Ryan Kent playing brilliantly, albeit in training against his own mates. He has taken “the cards” out of the hands of the contract rebels, although they can still talk to any club they want to in four weeks’ time. He’s “hit the ground running.”

He’s running his mouth, that’s a fact. He’s talking big and talking tough and talking a good game. But very soon his mouth and his bombast and his arrogance and his attitude will collide with the harsh reality of having to take on this Celtic team.

And that, I suspect, is when the talking will turn to something else. Pathetic whimpering, if past experience is anything to go by. We’ve heard the tune so often we could hum it in our sleep, but we don’t because it sounds too much like The Billy Boys.

The media, as usual, is lashing on the soft soap. None of this is anything we haven’t heard before. Remember when they appointed Warburton? He was a whiz-kid and a genius and how long did he last again? Then there was Pedro. The “Portuguese James Bond” who was a bullfighter and knew how to turn a key on a jet-ski.

Forget that dozens of half pissed guys on stag nights have done both of those things … Pedro was going to come in and clean our clock for us. So wrote Keith Jackson, who should never have emerged out in public again at the shame of turning in copy that dire.

That appointment went well, didn’t it? Remember the night he addressed fans from the bushes in Luxembourg? That was one of the highlights of the Early Banter Years.

Beale is up there with the best of them already, making excuses for the club’s poor form, reminding everyone constantly of how he and Gerrard were “four points clear” when they fled Glasgow like a couple running from the bailiffs (we had dropped ten points in the first seven games, don’t forget) and how he’s not going to play favourites but will drive people to new heights. Or new lows. We’ll soon find out, because he can’t bluster forever.

Soon enough – his first competitive game is two weeks on Thursday – he’s going to have to do more than just talk. He’s going to have to put out a winning team and appease fans who have proved to be largely unappeasable. He’s going to have to make sense of a fragmented, disoriented squad in a club that is in turmoil from top to bottom.

Then, and only then, will we see what he’s actually got. I don’t know about you, but I’m looking forward to January, when Ange bursts this ego bubble like a kids balloon after a party.