Michael Beale drops "sad" QPR exit admission - It wasn't an easy choice to leave Loftus Road | OneFootball

The 44-year-old left Loftus Road to join Rangers in November 2022.

Michael Beale has admitted that leaving Queens Park Rangers was a very tough decision for him to make because of his love and connection to the club.

Beale had the R's believing that a return to the Premier League was possible. By the end of gameweek 11 of the 2022/23 Championship campaign, QPR were sat atop the second tier.

They were firing on all cylinders with Beale, a first-time boss, at the helm, but this also attracted the attention of other clubs. Wolverhampton Wanderers were heavily linked with him, and it was reported that the 44-year-old was going to join them.

In the end, he rejected the opportunity in favour of staying at Loftus Road, all for him to leave to join Scottish side Rangers just more than a month later.

His tenure brought highs and lows for the QPR faithful, but he has stated, in an interview with Edward Lynch, that his initial few months with the club were some of his best moments as a manager, and that he wishes the club nothing but the best going forward.

Michael Beale reflects on his QPR days

"I felt that I was at a point in my career where I felt it was the right step for me to make to become a manager, and I felt that at QPR was a perfect opportunity for that for a number of reasons," Beale said on first moving to Loftus Road.

"Having met the owners and spoken to them about their passion, but also the club had some financial issues so it needed me to work with the young group that they had, and maybe just bring in loans or free transfers. And I felt very comfortable because I believed already in three or four of the players that were there in the squad, so I was excited to go and work with them.

"It was a fantastic period. Obviously my first management job, you can imagine that I went into it with lots and lots of energy. It ws the first time building my own coaching staff. I had fantastic support from Les Ferdinand, the sporting director, which was really, really important, and also the head of youth, Chris Ramsay, who was a renowned head of youth, was in the building as well.

"I had a really good number of people around me, and the players, when we came out at pre-season, they just took to the ideas. We had some fantastic results, we were very, very good away from home in that period. Millwall, Bristol City, Sheffield United, Watford; we went to all these places and won, and we gave the QPR fans some fantastic days out.

"We managed to get to the top of the Championship, which, my remit was maybe just to keep the team in the league and show that we could progress over time. So we were way ahead of schedule and it's sad that it obviously ended when it did, but there was a lot of things.

"Obviously, there was an approach from another team in the Premier League that everyone is aware of, and then obviously Rangers came back in the World Cup break.

"With my family being here and everything, my relationship with Rangers from the year before, it was a tough decision that I had to make. But I look back on my time with QPR with only fondness. It was the time that I've enjoyed the most as a manager, outside of maybe the first three months at Rangers, which were also very good.

"I've still got a lot of friends there in the playing staff and the backroom staff. Occassionally I keep in touch with the ownership as well and drop them a good luck message. I just wish that club every success in the future and, certainly on my side, there's only real warm feelings and good memories."

Michael Beale timed his QPR exit well

Purely looking at things from a Michael Beale perspective, ignoring the odd circumstances in which he stayed and then decided to leave, taking the Rangers job when he did was probably best for him. There's only one way to go once you reach the summit, and QPR were hit hard by the steep nature of their decline down the league table.

They were seventh when Beale took the job in Glasgow, and, despite his side's poor form towards the end of his Loftus Road reign, he left the R's with a decent bit of Championship credibility that ultimately helped him get the Sunderland job.

That didn't end well either, but you can see why, from his point of view, leaving when he did was the right thing to do.