Michael Beale has had quite a bit to say regarding Celtic’s transfer activity, since replacing Giovanni van Bronckhorst as the manager of the Rangers towards the end of last year. Of course, the Hoops fans have not taken too kindly to his comments and it helped build up the hype leading up to the Scottish League Cup final.
There was bad news for Beale in that game though. While the Rangers have certainly improved since his arrival, they looked second best in almost all departments against Celtic on the big day.
The 2-1 scoreline does not tell the entire story. Celtic could have scored three or more goals quite easily, but missed some sitters in front of goal.
Ultimately, that did not have an impact on the result though and Celtic were deserving winners of the League Cup, thanks to a brace from Kyogo, just like last season against Hibernian. On the other hand, it showed the gap that there still exists between the two teams of Glasgow. Over the past year or so, the Hoops have won on four occasions while the Ibrox team have managed only one win.
Beale makes interesting claim after losing to Celtic
Despite his previous comments about Celtic’s transfer activity under the management of Ange Postecoglou, it looks like Beale will be looking towards the transfer window as well, in hopes of rebuilding his team. As reported by The Herald, the Rangers manager said:
"“I want to build a strong team. It is my job to take the emotion out of the match and then make decisions on who we want to stick around as we move and build forward. When the window reopens, there is going to be change.“We have been in excellent form in the league but we haven’t been able to close the gap. We have made progress and have played with more style, but we didn’t perform on Sunday. The job to build the team would still have been the same whether we won or lost.“In the summer, we are at a point of change. We know we have two more derbies before the end of the season and we are focused on a better showing in these games, we also expect a potential third match in the Scottish Cup.“We need to recruit three or four that are going to make a massive impact in this team. It may be I feel we need to change one or two in contract. We also need to sort out the future of one or two.”"
That is certainly interesting to say the least. And let’s see how many changes the Rangers end up making.
If the club do end up making too many changes over future transfer windows, perhaps Beale should be replayed some of the comments that he made about Celtic’s moves under the management of Postecoglou. As things stand, the Hoops are quite a few steps ahead.