THE fall-out from football clubs’ financial excesses, like that from a nuclear explosion, seems likely to hang around for decades, making the game in Scotland an area of restricted movement. Recent evidence confirms, too, that the effects of this lingering malevolence are not confined simply to the business of acquiring and paying players.
Directors throughout the country will have realised by now that, in the matter of seeking out and hiring a new manager, their range of choice has been significantly narrowed. The experiences of the two Edinburgh clubs, Hearts and Hibs, make an inform
ative point of reference.
Before Bobby Williamson left Easter Road for Plymouth Argyle, he reluctantly agreed to accept a reduction in earnings at the Edinburgh club who discovered they could no longer afford the terms of his original contract.
When Hibs cast around for his replacement, these financial imperatives would, as a matter of course, limit their options. Tony Mowbray, a coach looking for his first job as a manager in his own right, would be the ideal candidate.
Similarly, when Craig Levein indicated his desire to accept the offer from Leicester City, Hearts would have a relatively low wage ceiling to present to any prospective employee. It was their good fortune that John Robertson, a natural successor, was readily available, working at a considerably smaller club.
This is not to suggest for an instant that neither Mowbray nor Robertson is the right man for the job. Indeed, the big Englishman has already demonstrated an encouraging readiness to mould a team that plays football in the style that Hibs supporters prefer.
As for the former Scotland striker - properly revered at Tynecastle - parallels between himself and his predecessor are so pronounced that it will be almost a shock if he does not succeed. Like Levein, who cut his teeth in management at Cowdenbeath, he was a celebrated contributor to Hearts as a player and indicated an aptitude for coaching throughout his apprenticeship at Livingston and Inverness.
Levein is understood to have started at Hearts at around £50,000 a year, a comparatively paltry amount these days. It is believed his salary had doubled - thanks to his own exceptional efforts - by the time he left. Robertson and Mowbray, it is reasonable to assume, will not be excessively remunerated in these early days of their careers with the Edinburgh clubs.
This reduction in options, of course, is not exclusive to Hearts and Hibs. When Alex McLeish joined Rangers, for instance, it would be for appreciably less money than Dick Advocaat enjoyed. Other clubs who have changed managers in recent months, including Dunfermline and Aberdeen, would also be offering less in comparison with previous years, when TV income was at its height.
The compensation for directors in this compression of choice is that at least a formerly lengthy, complicated and often wearing search-find-and-appoint process may be mercifully truncated.
THE SFA does not have to work within the close parameters of its member clubs in its quest for a successor to Berti Vogts, the governing body’s treasury currently in excellent health as a result of some astute commercial coups in the past few years.
That will surely change if the Scotland team continue to fail to qualify for major championships and plummet through the world rankings, making themselves unappealing to sponsors and potential rights buyers. This is a consideration that would help to underline the need for the departure of the German.
If, however, Vogts left one useful legacy, it may have been his bizarre farewell statement. It was immediately noticeable that the scatter gun he used to fire blame in all directions was never turned on himself. By the time he approached the finish, the bit where he emoted like a demented Oscar winner over the loyalty of "my boys", it seemed clear that he had gone over the edge.
Perhaps the SFA could frame the speech and hang it on the wall of the national team manager’s office at Hampden, over a note with motivational properties: "This is how you’ll turn out if you mess up."
IF THERE is any consolation to be drawn from those occasional cerebral short circuits that result in a glaring error in print, it comes from affirmation of the uncommon intelligence and knowledge of those regular readers of The Scotsman’s sports section.
The latest example was to be found last Tuesday morning, when this columnist’s piece on wee Berti’s resignation began with a reference to Richard Nixon’s famous "you won’t have me to kick around any more" farewell to the press. This was attributed to the disgraced former US president when he quit the White House in 1974.
The majority of the country’s milkmen would not have completed their rounds before the first e-mail arrived, triumphantly reminding us that Nixon, of course, had uttered the valediction in 1962, on the occasion of his defeat by Pat Brown in California’s gubernatorial election.
If drink is the curse of the working classes (or, as Oscar Wilde had it, the vice versa), deadlines are the journalist’s equivalent. News of Berti’s resignation was an evening event, requiring 900 words to fill the back page in time for the first edition. Such circumstances occasionally spawn vulnerability.
The foregoing paragraph should not be mistaken for a plea for exoneration or forgiveness; it is merely an explanation. The rebuke was well deserved and it should also be said that it was most welcome. Nobody is ever harmed by a reminder of his own fallibility.
The full article contains 968 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
