Jimmy Calderwood in today's Daily Record

[Guest swaddon]

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/2008/09/27/exclusive-i-was-so-ashamed-after-scottish-cup-defeat-reveals-aberdeen-boss-jimmy-calderwood-86908-20755737/

 

Exclusive: I was so ashamed after Scottish Cup defeat, reveals Aberdeen boss Jimmy Calderwood

 

Sep 27 2008 By Hugh Keevins

 

THERE'S nothing the Celtic or Aberdeen supporters can throw at Jimmy Calderwood today that will convince the Pittodrie manager football is a matter of life or death.

 

Not when he spent part of this week recording a video presentation to be played at the funeral of a Dons supporter who proved the world isn't out to get the man whose start to the season's brought him under pressure.

 

The fan who died in an oil industry accident had never met Calderwood until the night he was in the same Aberdeen restaurant.

 

He paid for the manager's meal before Calderwood could get the bill for his wife and himself.

 

The Dons boss said: "The story I told in the video was that the supporter actually used his dad's credit card to settle the bill.

 

"I don't know if his old man ever saw the money but he was a lovely lad who only wanted to know what I was going to do with the team he'd always supported."

 

Calderwood had to miss being at the funeral in person yesterday because he was travelling to Glasgow to prepare his team for a game that will be used in evidence against him if anything goes wrong.

 

The manager is in the dock after a start to the season that's been low on points and high on criticism.

 

The jury members who attended Wednesday night's shambolic defeat to Kilmarnock in the Co-operative Insurance Cup at Rugby Park delivered a noisy verdict of guilty on the manager's defensively inept team.

 

Pittodrie chief executive Willie Miller, another former Dons boss, has felt obliged to offer public support for Calderwood in the wake of that setback.

 

And yet there those in the Granite City who say Miller is wasting his time by acting as a human shield because the Red Army despise Calderwood for being a Glaswegian.

 

But there's nothing of a derogatory nature which can be said about the Pittodrie manager that can make him feel any worse than he did on the last visit to the city of his birth.

 

When Aberdeen lost 4-3 to Queen of the South in the semi-finals of the Scottish Cup at Hampden last April a vision in Calderwood's mind was destroyed and three days of torment followed.

 

He said: "I've kept this mental image in my mind of being on an open-top bus, parading a trophy in front of 100,000 delirious Aberdeen fans on a parade through the city.

 

"If we'd beaten Gordon Chisholm's side the vision would have become a reality.

 

"I know we'd have beaten Rangers in the final and I can say that with confidence because Walter Smith told me recently he knew Aberdeen would have beaten his side at that time.

 

"But we blew it and the journey back to Aberdeen, followed by the days thereafter, formed a horrible experience.

 

"The fans were outraged and when their buses caught up with our team coach on that long road home there was a lot of banging on the windows accompanied by angry words hurled in our direction.

 

"I felt ashamed and physically unable to speak. I didn't say a word to anyone for two days and locked myself away at home.

 

"Eventually people from the club came round to make sure I hadn't done myself a mischief and check on my wife while they were there."

 

The torment Calderwood felt was made worse because he's always been haunted by a feeling he never made the most of his playing career. And his antidote to lingering depression over being unfulfilled is success as a manager.

 

He said: "If I win a trophy it will take away all the subconscious anger I feel. A cup win and a league victory over Rangers at Ibrox, the only place I've never won as a boss in Scotland, and the critics couldn't find anything left to shout about where I'm concerned. They'd probably try but I'd be past caring by then."

 

Calderwood's managerial career in this country has had him at Dunfermline, where the walls full of photographs depicting Jock Stein's triumphs there tell their own story, and Aberdeen, the club synonymous with Sir Alex Ferguson.

 

The current Dons boss said: "I sometimes think, 'You could have made it easier on yourself'. But I love the city of Aberdeen and I feel honoured to be the manager of their team. I've had charge of the club longer than anyone since Alex left 21 years ago and that's a distinction I'm proud of, even though there are complications.

 

"What Sir Alex did at Pittodrie left some supporters spoiled for life. But I've never been sacked during 18 years in management and always been allowed to make my own choices. That's meant turning down two offers to go back to Holland and manage Eredivisie sides.

 

"I didn't even discuss the approaches with Aberdeen because there was no need when my ambitions lay within Pittodrie."

 

Calderwood has control of a club where spending constraints and a need to balance the books have forced him to sell more quality than he's been able to bring in.

 

And he can become frustrated while quantifying the kind of money sloshing around the city and seeing it take a detour round the football ground in its midst.

 

He said: "I went to a do in Gleneagles for some of our well-heeled fans and counted 25 millionaires in the function suite. I thought to myself, 'If you all put in a million quid, what a difference it would make to us'.

 

"But I understand the way the game works today. In the past Aberdeen have had their fingers burnt, financially speaking, and they won't go through that pain again when they have to consider the next 100 years of the club's history. I'll get on with it and try to build on a team who are capable of beating anyone on their day, or losing to anyone if they're off form."

 

The manager is also willing to admit his job is a form of addiction brought on by an aversion to anything other than football.

 

He said: "I play golf but I'm utterly hopeless. I don't relax away from football because I can't relax.

 

"I've talked to doctors and they've told me that for medical reasons it's probably just as well I let go ofmy emotions on the trackside during matches.

 

"People see Johnathan Watson imitating me on television and they think that's what I'm really like. It's funny, but it's not accurate.

 

I don't laugh my way through football because I know I could have had a better career as a player and my aim is to be a winning manager to compensate for that.

 

"My upbringing will give me the strength to go on looking for ways to fulfil my ambition. By the time I left Glasgow for a career as a player in England I'd graduated from the school of hard knocks in Govan and Castlemilk.

 

"Since then, I've played for my country and I've gone abroad to work.

 

"I've pitted my wits against Louis van Gaal and Johan Cruyff and, given the lifespan of the average manager today, I've had a fair run by lasting four and a half years at Aberdeen. When I go to Celtic Park it'll be with a sense of anticipation instead of fear. I respect them and love the banter with the supporters who'll start to give me dog's abuse from the minute I get off our team bus.

 

"I constantly need to test myself and I know the side I'm working with will improve once players such as Mark Kerr and Gary McDonald have overcome the fact it's hard living up to other people's expectation levels.

 

"Walter Smith once told me he became a better manager for taking a time-out after he left Everton and before he took the Scotland job.

 

"But I can't bring myself to take a break because I'd miss the game too much. I'm a man in a privileged position, no matter what anyone says about me."

 

'I could have had better career as a player and my aim is to be winning manager to compensate for that'

 

And yet there those in the Granite City who say Miller is wasting his time by acting as a human shield because the Red Army despise Calderwood for being a Glaswegian.

 

"And yet there those" in the Granite City who know how to speak English, and I don't think anyone despises him just for being a Glaswegian.

[Kowalski]

"And yet there those" in the Granite City who know how to speak English, and I don't think anyone despises him just for being a Glaswegian.

 

Agreed, but there are clearly some who hold it against him.

 

Couldn't care less where he's from to be honest.

[BobbyBiscuit]

The Glaswegian thing is a crock of shit but what do you expect of that cunt Keevins and the rag he "works" for?  They bang on about the expectation levels at Aberdeen, but was the manager who is responsible for those supposed expectations not from the same place as JC?  And what about Miller and McLeish?  Did we hate the three of them in spite of all their successes for our club?

 

They'll write anything to have a dig at the Dons fans - "they hate the manager cos he's from Glasgow", "They have unrealistic expectations and are living in the past", what's next? Imagining that we're singing songs about the Ibrox Disaster...?

[Reekie_Red]

WTF? Keevins at his best, as per usual.

 

Where in this article does Jimmy say he's despised because he's Glaswegian? When have we ever said that? We despise him because of his crazy tactical choices. We despise him because he'd rather give chances to the guys who are a little bit way and a little bit wow in the dressing room, rather than favouring the guys who have genuine talent. We despise him because of his decision to play an untested keeper in a cup match against one of the SPL's form teams.

 

Incase it had escaped Keevins, the most successful Aberdeen manager of all time is proud to call himself a Govan loon. Wisen the fuck up, Keevins. We couldn't give a fuck where a player or manager is from ... so long as they give their all for Aberdeen.

[BringBackLapirasTache]

Daily Record is jimmys mouthpiece, if they feel the need to come out with this story then he must be getting worried that the club are thinking about giving him the bullet.

The we don't like him because he is from glasgow/hun is getting dragged out every time we vent our anger at jimmy. We welcomed jimmy into the fold and chants of jimmy jimmy calderwood could be heard at every home and away game the first season (only heard it at the Copenhagen game recently).

The truth is we don't like him because his style of football has zero entertainment, his tactics are selected at random, his press relations skills with the aberdeen fans and players is pathetic and he shows no idea how to nurture young players in an age when teams in scotland are making good money in transfer fee's.

[Kowalski]

I would suggest that 75% of their "stories" about the Dons are lifted straight from the Evening Express the night before (and some of those stories are lifted from football forums like DonsTalk  ).

 

Total rag, just trying to stir things up as usual.  Don't know why people bother reading it.  Same goes for The Sun.