Daniel Downie says… we need to talk about Derek

Wouldn’t it be great if there was an actual managerial merry-go-round? Instead of watching your offspring meander around aimlessly on old Victorian horses you could watch them yelp in delight while riding Big-Ron Atkinson, bobbing up and down on Souness, and clinging onto Steve McLaren’s brolly. For defamation purposes and for the benefit of any officers reading who may be trawling the internet on behalf of ‘Operation Yewtree,’ I should point out I am being quite literal. I’d love to see children outside Asdas up and down the country, feeding coins into the mouth of mechanical Paul Sturrocks’ enjoying being soothingly rocked back and forth while holding onto massive ear lobes acting as handlebars.

Usually football management is more like a round-about at a play park than a gentle merry-go-round. The spinning starts off as good-natured fun until your friends start pushing you at ungodly, haemorrhage-inducing speed and you hobble off feeling sick, dizzy, and decidedly let-down by those responsible for pushing you. Not this week however. Of the twelve managers who have now taken over since Fergie left for, erm I can’t actually remember who, we have had the first manager who has left the club without being handed their P45 or kicked down the North Stand steps. Craig Brown has gently stepped off the fairground ride deciding he prefers the tea-cups of the boardroom to the managerial merry-go-round. Fair enough, but what of his successor? Dons chairman Stewart Milne must have caused some confusion when he picked up the phone and screamed at his associates ‘GET ME DEREK’.

The result was Ross County chairman Roy MacGregor rebuffing Aberdeen’s attempts to land their man saying he was ‘99% sure’ Derek Adam’s would still be Ross County manager next season – in much the same way MacGregor’s engineering company ‘Global Energy’ were ‘99% sure’ they had mapped out the correct distance for the Inverness 5K, they were in fact 400 metres short leaving thousands unhappy at their invalid PB’s, particularly Ross Tokely who is still yet to complete 5k in under 90 minutes.

So Aberdeen went and got themselves another Derek, and the arrival of Derek McInnes – or Derek ‘McWinless’ as he’s almost certainly known by Bristol City fans thanks to a club record seven match losing streak that led to his sacking in January this year – has been greeted with about as much merriment as you would expect from a shot on a merry-go-round. His golfer’s applause is in part because of his past association with Rangers. ‘Aberdeen for Change’ – spare change I assume? – tweeted of McInnes’s first press conference.

‘Thought McInnes handled questions well. Dodged Rangers ones well’

In much the same way he managed to ‘dodge’ the Rangers first team so effectively. I don’t care if he played for the Hitler Youth or the notorious 5-a-side team that was in our university league, ‘Islamic Jihad’, if he can get fans ‘flocking’ – sheep joke – back to Pittodrie then he will be as welcome as our previous messiah who played out of Govan.

Derek McInnes does tick all the boxes for me, especially his experience at ‘Toulouse’ which should set him up perfectly for a managerial stint at Aberdeen. I’m not an inherently negative person – despite my nickname at school being ‘Frownie Downie’, well that and ‘syndrome’ -but the Aberdeen job is surely not the ideal job to come into as young, recently sacked manager –with the exception of Sir Alex of course. After getting the job Derek McInnes said ‘the professional rewards are there to be seen’. I’d say the challenge at this stage far outweighs the rewards – look at his previous eleven predecessors, they’ve hardly gone onto cover themselves in glory since leaving the club. It’s a risky move for a young manager. Aberdeen is a big club, a big fish in a relatively small pond. The problem for McInnes is at the moment we’re a ‘big, sh*t fish’.

Aberdeen fans are restless, disenfranchised, and the style of football McInnes adopted at St Johnstone will not satisfy a group of fans eager for some success and some goals in a season that has thrown up six nil-nil results and some appallingly passive football. McInnes has addressed the expectations of the Aberdeen fans; expectations the fans have gained notoriety for over the years. He’s set his stall out early telling the media he expects Aberdeen to be competing at the top of the table, challenging cup finals regularly, and consistently playing in Europe. He has made winning silverware his top priority, which seems perplexing, if he had taken over at any other club that had finished ninth in their previous three seasons surely going onto to win trophies wouldn’t be anywhere near the horizon?

That is what it is to be the Aberdeen manager however, and I find it quite refreshing to hear McInnes coming out and saying that the apparently wild expectations of a club with one of the biggest budgets and biggest supports in the league aren’t so overly inflated after all. He can hardly come out and say he is going to ‘build on the building work’ done by Brown and Knox but what he did do was appear bullish, confident, and spoke eloquently and passionately. The special one he may not be, but he will require something quite special if he is to fulfil the high standards he has set from himself at Aberdeen.

Over ten million in debt and with a crippling lack of infrastructure, and eighteen years since their last cup win and thirteen since their last cup final appearance in an era where other clubs have come away with domestic cup successes – Hearts, Dundee United, Kilmarnock, St Mirren and Hibernian – Aberdeen’s record is all the more worrying. McInnes will be expected to sell young talent and work miracles with loans and free-transfers. He’s done that before with signings such as Michael Duberry and Jody Morris – signings that have been lauded so much in the press recently you would have thought they were Mascherano and Tevez –and he got striker Nicky Maynard firing in goals at Bristol City helping them off the bottom of the table and securing their Championship status courtesy of an impressive eight game unbeaten run. Perhaps he can do the same at Aberdeen.

It was inevitable after Craig Brown Aberdeen would opt for a young manager with something to prove. From an Aberdeen point of view it is difficult to be optimistic however. If McInnes is successful he will likely follow the previously travelled route to the English Championship, fail, and he may well end up in Scottish footballs increasingly large abyss. Being a manager in Scottish football at this moment in time can’t be easy; it’s an even tougher gig being a Scottish football fan.

As a kid my old man would tell me unbelievable bed time stories, fantastical fairy-tales about times far gone and far-away places, apparently Aberdeen used to be good in the 80’s. In times of great despair he would always tell me ‘don’t worry son, every dog has its day’ our problem of course is that we’re a big, sh*t fish.

But best of luck at Derek, this faithful Dons fan awaits.

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About the Author
Daniel Downie is an aspiring comedian from Dingwall in the Highlands. Being from Dingwall Daniel is a Ross County fan but also has inherited the Aberdeen supporter gene from his father. As a child Daniel idolised Aberdeen legend Eoin Jess and is still traumatised from watching Eion break his leg in a Scottish cup game against Clydebank aged 9. Daniel is a keen football coach who has ‘most of his badges’ and his highlight in football came when he was told to F*ck off in Galeic while playing for Lewis side Ness FC. He was also almost hit by Premiership goalkeeper Brad Friedel after Daniel advised him ‘not to drop his pint’ after a game where Brad let in 3 soft goals. Daniel and his pal also managed to get a free whisky in a pub in Glasgow after claiming Daniel’s pal was the guy at Pittodire who tried to kick Fernando Ricksen in the head (he wasn’t)

Comedy wise Daniel has made it to the final of the ‘Old Speckled Hen Comedian of the Year 2010’ competition and Highlight’s New Act 2011 competition and has also won the Comedy Store’s ‘King Gong’ competition. He writes a blog www.freeforapound.blogspot.com

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