Michael Beale makes a strange Rangers confession about Malik Tillman | OneFootball

Michael Beale has stated that Malik Tillman’s introduction on 10 minutes at Ibrox at the weekend was ‘forced’ and decried the fact he had three 10s and two 9s on the pitch as a result.

The manager, forced into an early sub as John Lundstram’s ankle got rolled during a tackle, had Glen Kamara and new signing Nicolas Raskin on the bench, but opted instead to use another 10 in Malik Tillman which imbalanced the side.

He said:

‘We ended up’ suggests he didn’t have another defensive midfielder to replace Lundstram, but the curious thing is he had two, and ended up using both of them anyway as the match progressed. But strangely didn’t plump for either when he had the chance.

Now, there’s a slim case for Nicolas Raskin, given he had only just arrived and might not have been completely up to speed (although his later introduction didn’t hint at that being true at all), but Glen Kamara was off the back of an excellent performance at Hearts and was certainly in form and looking the most motivated he’s been in maybe years.

And yet neither of these players was chosen.

Instead, Beale complains about the fact he ‘had’ to use Malik Tillman when clearly he didn’t. It’s an odd one.

In the end it was a win, and that’s all that matters – the three points are the end result and that’s what we deal in – winning football matches.

But Beale’s comments really do leave him open to a lot of scrutiny, with a touch of inconsistency in there to say the least. And if he’s complaining about not having a defensive midfielder on the pitch, why not bring one of them on?

Thankfully, we won.