Sunderland look as though they are about to hire this 43-year-old former Championship boss as their new head coach.
Sunderland are still on the lookout for their next boss, and this week has seen the search for Tony Mowbray’s successor ramp up.
Will Still and Jimmy Thelin are two names being closely linked, with the latter now apparently keen on the job after holding preliminary talks with the Sunderland hierarchy.
And it’s also been quite widely reported that Beale is a person of interest and that he too has held talks with the club.
He was linked with the club last week before his name somewhat disappeared from headlines, now though, in a surprising turn of events, it looks like the 43-year-old is set to arrive at the Stadium of Light.
Multiple reports have claimed that Beale is set to be named as the club’s next head coach after holding advanced talks with the club’s hierarchy.
Michael Beale set to land Sunderland job
The 43-year-old doesn’t seem like an overly favoured option among Sunderland fans.
He’s vastly inexperienced in the Championship having only managed a few months in the second tier with QPR, now coming off the back of a spell at Rangers which was described as ‘awful’ by Chris Sutton.
And taking to X earlier today, trusted Sunderland source Michael Graham had initially played down the Beale talk:
But in what is a hugely surprising turn of events, Beale now looks set to watch on at Ashton Gate this weekend as Sunderland take on Bristol City in the Championship, before replacing Mowbray.
Can Michael Beale take Sunderland forward?
Beale certainly seems like a left-field appointment.
It comes against the run of play and appears to go against what we already knew about the club’s managerial hunt; that a foreign coach was preferred, given the current infrastructure at the club.
So Beale seems like an unlikely appointment in that sense, and Rangers fans surely won’t back him to succeed at the Stadium of Light, but the Sunderland board will have done their due diligence here and the fans will surely get behind Beale either way.
Beale’s only experience of Championship football came in a fairly brief spell at QPR at the start of last season.
He got the R’s playing good, attacking football and his departure saw QPR really tail off under the likes of Neil Critchley and Gareth Ainsworth, so that could be a good indicator that Beale is in fact a good coach at Championship level.
He’ll surely be eager to prove his worth after a sour spell at Rangers, and he’ll no doubt be taking a close look at the Black Cats this weekend as they go up against an out of sorts Bristol City.