Beale walked out on Zulte Waregem with the exact 12-game record he had at Sunderland

Zulte Waregem weren't going to fire Michael Beale. After six straight league defeats, the Belgian club had kept faith in the 46-year-old Englishman, Het Nieuwsblad reported. On Wednesday he quit anyway. He leaves with four wins, two draws and six losses from 12 games, which, as Yahoo Sports pointed out, is exactly the record he had in his 12 games at Sunderland.

The start was much better than anyone expected for a squad that made few signings over the summer. Zulte Waregem went five league games unbeaten, beating Genk at home and rivals Kortrijk and drawing away at title-chasing Union Saint-Gilloise. Nieuwsblad put it at 11 points from 15.

Then it turned. After a 1-0 defeat at Charleroi, the results kept getting worse, and the last six league games brought zero points from 18. Last weekend's 4-1 loss at Sint-Truiden was the final straw, HLN reported, but the decision was his, not the club's.

According to Nieuwsblad, talks with the club's leadership showed that Beale and his bosses were no longer on the same page about several things, and he felt he had too little say in which players were signed. That fits the complaint around the squad since the summer: a thin group that overachieved early and was then exposed.

It's a different kind of exit from the ones on his record. Rangers sacked him in October 2023 after a strong first half-season, and Sunderland let him go in February 2024 after 12 games. This time a club that was prepared to stand by him lost him on his own terms.

Yahoo Sports' numbers give the full picture. Beale's best spell remains Rangers, where he averaged 2.3 points per game and won 72% of his matches. At QPR it was 1.4 points per game and a 41% win rate. Zulte Waregem now sits next to Sunderland as two short spells with the same 4-2-6 line.

For a coach who built his name as a development specialist at Chelsea and Liverpool and as Steven Gerrard's assistant, the pattern since leaving QPR is hard to ignore. In his last two jobs his teams faded quickly, and he left both after 12 games.

Beale is the latest of a long run of changes in the Belgian Pro League. Jess Thorup, Michiel Jonckheere and Edward Still have all been dismissed, Voetbalprimeur noted. Sint-Truiden and Cercle Brugge appointed new coaches in time for last weekend, RAAL La Louvière made their appointment this week, and Genk are still looking.

Zulte Waregem go into the international break looking for a coach who can stop a six-game slide with largely the same squad, the one Beale felt he had too little say in building. How much input the next coach gets on signings may matter as much as who he is.