 | Goodbye Fir Park - Hello Pittodrie |
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There's no point waiting until your club is failing before replacing your manager. Better to have a solid foundation for a new boss, capable of lifting the club to the next level, to build upon.
But then there's equally no point in getting rid of a manager who is bringing continual improvement to the club. So the ideal state to choose to shake up your club's management is the start point of stagnation; the club being stable but showing no signs of improvement.
Amazingly, the Aberdeen board plainly agree with that half-arsed making-it-up-as-I-go-along theory. The Dons had not improved this season from last - in fact, the seasons were all but identical: SPL fourth place, 4 goals scored against us as we capitulated in the League Cup, humiliating exit to lower-league side in the Scottish Cup, and while last season we performed well in Europe, this term we qualified for Europe.
That would be a successful couple of seasons for maybe 95 percent of Scotland's league clubs, but for AFC that was enough to boot out the previous management team and provide a solid foundation upon which incoming gaffer Mark McGhee can - hopefully - engineer a Grand Design.
And it's fair to say there has been a good bit of (mostly) measured excitement from us Dons fans since his appointment. Not Geordie-style blind mayhem, but I daresay many a red-n-white-blooded fist was clenched and pumped when the announcement finally came through on Friday morning. In fact, the feeling was a milder version of one not experienced since Willie Miller was made manager in 1992.
Like Miller, Mark McGhee is a legend at the club - being part of the most successful era in Aberdeen's history - and has a long-lasting affinity with the supporters. But unlike when our current Director of Football became gaffer, the new boss has almost 20 years' managerial experience behind him.
His time as manager of Motherwell indicates that he is everything that Jimmy Calderwood wasn't: understated and articulate in the media, and is able to organise a team to play attractive fitba without alienating players or using eight equally bewildering formations per game.
But we are not wearing blinkers - he is not some kind of messiah who we demand to have us challenging the Old Firm and winning cups immediately. He is hampered because Pittodrie is still operating under a strict financial structure for the near future, and there are also question marks over whether McGhee will improve on Calderwood in two key areas - cup record and relationship with the paying public.
McGhee's cup record throughout his career is at least as woeful as Calderwood's was at Aberdeen, with an even higher percentage of KOs to lower-league clubs, and only one semi-final appearance - Calderwood managed two, as well as a final with Dunfermline.
Plus, earlier this year McGhee incurred the wrath of the Motherwell support when he stated in the press that he doesn't "give a monkey's what the fans think" following supporter criticism of tactics during a game. But at other times McGhee has said many good things in the press, such as when asked, with Motherwell sitting in seventh in the SPL heading towards the split, if he thought the team could reach the Top 6, he replied: "I still think we can reach third place".
It is that sort of ambition and drive that many Dons fans believe has been missing from the management at the club in recent years, and clearly the club agrees that McGhee is the man to bring that back. He is also - yes, I'm going to say it - some one who understands what Aberdeen the city, and Aberdeen FC the club, are about. In the tight, territorial world of fitba it's pointless pretending this doesn't make a difference to the supporters. He's got a connection with us.
There's no doubt that McGhee is the Dons fans' first choice for manager - many had been talking about him as Calderwood's successor since this time last year. Because he has legendary status, and a decent record with previous clubs, he will get the fans' 100% backing - but distant memories of Willie Miller's sad demise as manager will temper too much enthusiasm and the building up of excess expectation. One step at a time...
And me personally? I'm bloody delighted!
COYR
Craig
(Stand Free Ed)
www.aberdeen-mad.co.uk
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