Michael Stewart: Allan McGregor unhappy with Michael Beale as ‘strange’ Rangers verdict shared on BBC Sportscene
Michael Stewart cannot understand Michael Beale’s decision to rotate goalkeepers after Jon McLaughlin had a shocker in Rangers’ 3-2 win over Kilmarnock on Wednesday night.
McLaughlin, 35, replaced Allan McGregor in goals at Rugby Park but conceded two avoidable goals when he should have done a lot better at keeping them out.
Beale’s decision to swap between McLaughlin and 40-year-old McGregor has raised eyebrows as it was a mistake also made by Giovanni van Bronckhorst at the start of the season.
And Stewart doubts that either goalkeeper is too happy with being chopped and changed every week while claiming it also has a negative effect on the outfield players too.
“It’s unorthodox and I doubt the two goalkeepers are overly enamoured by it either,” said Stewart on BBC Sportscene on Wednesday night (18 January, 38m47s).
“At the weekend, he said Allan McGregor is the number one but he’s now not played the last couple of league games.
“We’ll see what happens over a longer period of time what actually happens because you can’t do that week to week, game to game, chopping goalkeepers. You’ll lose any sort of continuity and partnership with defenders, which is what they’ve started to get with the centre-halves [Connor] Goldson and [Ben] Davies playing a little bit more.
“Time will tell on that one but at the moment it’s a little bit strange.”
Nonsense
Why is Beale doing this?
McLaughlin has had shocker after shocker this season and while McGregor has also been prone to errors, the 40-year-old is clearly the better option of the two despite his advancing age and the fact he’s out of contract in the summer.
As quoted by The National on 16 January, Beale even said it himself that McGregor is the best goalkeeper in Scotland.
If you have the best player in the country in one position, you don’t leave him out of the squad.
We don’t understand this insistence upon Rangers managers shooting themselves in the foot over the goalkeeping situation.
Yes, McGregor should have been replaced a year or two ago or at least a young, promising understudy should have been brought in.
But that doesn’t excuse the fact that McGregor is in a completely different league to McLaughlin, who has spent the majority of his career playing in the lower reaches of English football with Bradford City and Burton Albion.
Beale needs to stop messing around here.
Both goalkeepers should go in the summer and we don’t see why a replacement cannot be signed now because doing that would at least make more sense than playing McLaughlin.
In other Rangers news, the club want to sign this South American ace who’s playing in Europe.