Michael Park says Mark McGhee could be good for Scotland (No, seriously…)

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Many moons ago, in another life, I used the word ‘c**t’ to describe Mark McGhee and wished all the ills of the world upon him during his tenure as Aberdeen manager. Unfortunately this was on the Scheidtcast podcast which has stopped me reneging on that statement publicly.

Until now.

At the time my issue centred around the treatment of Aberdeen’s players. These were the days before the geriatric stylings of Craig brown and Archie Knox when men were men, women were women and Aberdeen’s lacklustre performances on the pitch saw them rooted to the bottom of the table after 15 games of the SPL season.

Under McGhee, Sone Aluko failed to recreate the form he’d shown previously under Jimmy Calderwood or would go on to show with Rangers or Hull City. This quote from Aluko to the press hints at a manager who struggled to know when to put an arm around a player instead of putting his size 9s into him: “I’m getting used to what the manager says about me every Sunday. If the team isn’t winning or creating I’m always the one people say hasn’t performed well enough.”

This comment had followed Aberdeen’s capitulation to Celtic when they shipped nine goals and looked for all the world like they’d never seen a football before. McGhee’s reaction to his team’s predicament was his usual bullish approach. He was quoted as telling the press to, “Go and look me up on Wikipedia. I’ve got a track record.” This was in reference to his ‘successful’ spell as Motherwell manager coupled with two Division 2 championships while at Reading and Millwall.

In addition to his assertions about his track record, he also went on record publicly criticising the club’s young squad for making mistakes brought about in part by inexperience and in part by the tactical errors of their manager. Fraser Fyvie, Peter Pawlett, Josh Magennis, et al were targets for their manager’s ire, sparking rumours of a dressing room revolt right off the bat.

The problem at Aberdeen, quite apart from McGhee’s impetuous desire to skirt around the problems in his team selection and tactics, was that McGhee was the main man. His dour attitude and misplaced criticism hung over Pittodrie like a dark cloud. A dark cloud which only added to the prevailing meteorological conditions in Scotland’s North East.

You’d think that having spent almost 400 words of an article slating Mark McGhee, I might find it difficult to support my hypothesis that he could be a tonic to Scotland’s backroom woe.

In previous regimes it has been the manager who has fallen under the spotlight for failing to deliver on the pitch but the question of personality is oft-overlooked by the media whose sights fall squarely on the man at the helm.

Under George Burley, a man who almost made me boycott the national team and seek family ties with Germany, he was assisted by Terry Butcher and Steven Pressley. Butcher’s credentials need no introduction, he was hard as nails while Stuart Pearce was only considering toughening up and Pressley had enjoyed something of a renaissance in his later career, making him the perfect bridge between the staff and players. [David Weir had a slightly different take on Pressley’s ‘bridging’ skills in his book. Ed.]

Did it work? Of course not. Burley’s lack of organisational awareness and over-reliance on ‘moments of magic’, coupled with the beginning of Scotland’s predominant excuse culture meant that Scotland began to slip away. It’s not unreasonable to suggest that the mixture of Burley and two very different assistants was responsible.

Burley was being undermined by external forces but by trying to be everyone’s best pal, he was undermining himself. His successor, Craig “Reactions Lenses” Levein went on to provide some of the most comical excuses for Scotland’s slumps yet.

Levein’s record as Scotland manager speaks for itself and combining with Peter Houston to present a two-man a cappella version of “Always Look on the Bright Side” to the Scottish media after every disappointing performance, the writing always looked to be on the wall.

So where are we now? We have the “fan’s choice” of manager in that he was an out of work Scottish manager who has succeeded and failed in equal measure and an assistant who has something to prove. Strachan is infinitely more media-savvy than any of his predecessors and will not back down if the players need the proverbial boot up the backside. A counterpoint comes in the form of Mark McGhee, a man so confident in his own ability that he will be a major force in the Hampden dressing room.

Strachan and McGhee’s tenure should signal an end of the woeful excuses dished out by the bucketload to protect footballers who should be doing better. McGhee’s no-holds-barred approach to dealing with footballers may well be proved more effective in dealing with seasoned internationals than it did at Aberdeen when he was seen to be berating a bunch of teenagers as opposed to managing them.

McGhee isn’t the main man but his contribution in the dressing room will be vital as a complement to Strachan’s tactical gameplans. If the results start to go the right way on the park, it will not be the McGhee of Wikipedia who has had a hand in the team’s success; it will be a McGhee on the leash of his former teammate. Just as Strachan once proved a marvellous foil for McGhee’s approach on the pitch, now McGhee has a chance to repay the favour off it.

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About the Author
When not corrupting glove puppets, Michael Park spends most of his time not being a comedian. As the former editor of the long-dead ‘Scheidt’s Footballing Miscellany’, Editor Teddy has given him license to spray his snark-ridden soccer surveyances over Scottish Comedy FC because he owes him “a favour” and “some money”.

Michael was once asked on to BBC World Service to talk about Wayne Rooney’s wage demands but after the producer found out how to pronounce ‘Scheidt’ he was never asked back. Since then he has created Sawker, a site all about football fallacies… and pictures.

He supports Kilmarnock Football Club and is largely unapologetic about it.

Follow Sawker on Twitter: @sawkernews

Check out the Sawker Tumblr site: http://sawker.tumblr.com

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