Next manager

[Panda]

Does managing at a lower League club prepare you for the Aberdeen manager's job? If so, why aren't we looking at the lower leagues - where's the Dougie Imrie or Lee Bullen chat?

And if Robson went to Dundee United and brought them success, we'd be paying six to seven figure sums to get him back here.

He's got coaching experience, had a storied playing career, knows the club, has set up the philosophy going forward for all the young players coming through, and with Steve Agnew he has bundles of experience to rely on. 

Barry Robson would be less of a risk than Ricardo Rodríguez, who has likely never set foot in Scotland. If they team up together, great, if Agnew stays too we'll have a very interesting management team. But if I had to pick between the two of them I'd pick Robson.

That said, I don't think Rodríguez is number one choice. Another name might emerge over the next few days.

[Slim]

Regarding Rodriguez, this taking his team to the Asian Champions League final then quitting before the final on the odd chance he picks up another job (like a mid-table Scottish league team who have won 1 trophy in almost 30 years) doesn’t sit right with me. It’s a bit shitebaggery.

[tlg1903]

Given the importance of the hearts game I think it would be insane to change the manager before it. With so much still to play for as well it's going to take a very impressive appointment to convince me not leaving Robson in charge until the end of the season wouldn't be the better option. 

Robson has massively steadied the ship, the players look happy and focused and the team has a bit of steel about it again.  Any new manager is going to have to start from scratch and we really don't need that right now.  As things stand 3rd place is well within reach and, lest we forget, 3rd place would be worth about 4-5 million quid to the club.  Bringing in a new guy now is a far bigger gamble than leaving Robson in charge for the rest of the season to my eye. 

[BigAl]

Bottom line is that there is no magic formula or we'd have used it a long time ago. 

Everything in life carries risk.

[OxfordDon]

In short:  Insufficient data.

Robson has been caretaker for only a handful of games, the names being bandied about are complete unknowns in the context of Scottish football, we still don't know where the players' heads are at.

Think somebody said earlier to leave Robson in place and take our time over getting the right candidate in closer to the summer, but keep things under review in the meantime.  I'd agree with that.

If Robson is clearly making a pigs arse of it, accelerate the hiring.  If Robson demonstrates he is the best choice, make him permanent.

After all, it's not like there's a plethora of big name candidates available who will go somewhere else if we don't act immediately.

 

[RicoS321]

If Robson is being given until summer, then he needs to be given the job permanently. Take another few weeks to see how it goes if necessary. If we're not considering Robson then we need to move now before he establishes a winning side. The longer he's allowed to settle in with the side and the fans, the harder it will be for the new guy. We've got the small matter of eight new players to replace the loanees too. That needs some movement on the precontract front if possible. It certainly doesn't need a new guy rocking up in June.

[Jute]

Agree with Rico that they need to be making a decision now on it being Robson or someone else as we have too big a rebuilding job on for the work on it not to begin now. In fact we are probably already behind on it as ideally you would already want to have some of precontract agreements tied up. 
 

ETA - Should say I am not convinced by Robson as a long term option so would want to see new manager in as soon as possible. 

[baggy89]

I think Robson's probably an ideal candidate for what we appear to be trying to achieve at the club. Especially if he's able to surround himself with (an)other good coach(es) like Agnew and we establish a good structure above him for recruitment and forward planning. 

[wokinginashearerwonderland]

42 minutes ago, baggy89 said:

good coach(es) like Agnew

Where is everyone getting this idea from that Agnew is a good coach? Of late he has been Steve Bruce’s right hand man, who has been shite from Villa, thru Sheff Wed, Newcastle and West Brom.

[sheepheid]

Give Robson some credit. When he was given the job on an interim basis, he has picked Agnew to come in and help him with his experience. Robson’s not picked him, like Strachan picked McGhee as a mates mate. He’s picked him because he worked under him and saw how good a coach he was. 
Robson has been at enough clubs and international level to know a good coach from a bad one.

[OrlandoDon]

52 minutes ago, sheepheid said:

Give Robson some credit. When he was given the job on an interim basis, he has picked Agnew to come in and help him with his experience. Robson’s not picked him, like Strachan picked McGhee as a mates mate. He’s picked him because he worked under him and saw how good a coach he was. 
Robson has been at enough clubs and international level to know a good coach from a bad one.

Any you know why Robson picked him? Assuming it was Robson that picked him. I’d speculate Robson, an interim hire who is under potential consideration, wouldn’t be given that authority. He may be asked for input but he wouldn’t have that power. And you know strachan only picked McGhee because he’s a mate? Can’t agree with either, you don’t know the inside reasonings unless you have close personal relationships here, which I’m assuming you do not (certainly correct me if I’m wrong.)  Robson, McGhee, and strachan have all worked at enough clubs and international level too.

there have been successful inexperienced managers and unsuccessful experienced managers, and vice versa. We failed with two inexperienced managers relative to our expectations, will be surprised if we go with a first time manager in Robson.

[RicoS321]

7 hours ago, OrlandoDon said:

Any you know why Robson picked him? Assuming it was Robson that picked him. I’d speculate Robson, an interim hire who is under potential consideration, wouldn’t be given that authority. He may be asked for input but he wouldn’t have that power. And you know strachan only picked McGhee because he’s a mate? Can’t agree with either, you don’t know the inside reasonings unless you have close personal relationships here, which I’m assuming you do not (certainly correct me if I’m wrong.)  Robson, McGhee, and strachan have all worked at enough clubs and international level too.

I think it was a fair comment, Robson has discussed how he spoke to Agnew, the evidence points to the club trusting Robson's judgement and him having the maturity to accept he needed help. The club will have perhaps insisted he get an experienced assistant, but the likelihood of them having thought about who is minimal. The usual authority offered a manager is for them to choose an assistant - the role itself has that authority - so in normal times it wouldn't be within anyone else's jurisdiction, so no list would have been drawn up in expectation. The overwhelming evidence for mark McGhee being appointed at Dundee points to his friendship with Strachan. Dundee fans were raging that there was no selection process, he was effectively coronated the moment mcpake left. Again, he mentioned his relationship with Strachan in interviews, I don't think it was a secret. Even Ross County went through a process when appointing Yogi as interim. That McGhee was largely finished as a manager was no secret either, I don't think you'll find a Dundee fan who doesn't believe that this was nepotism, and the club made no attempt to suggest otherwise either. It's not unusual in football either, and sometimes works.

 

7 hours ago, OrlandoDon said:

there have been successful inexperienced managers and unsuccessful experienced managers, and vice versa. We failed with two inexperienced managers relative to our expectations, will be surprised if we go with a first time manager in Robson

I would be too. I think we'll get someone we don't know much about. I don't think Robson will hang around much after that. He was skipped over for Glass' assistant by Brown despite being a full-time coach within the club for a number of years. To be skipped over again, for a guy with ambitions to manage, would probably be too much. Unless Cormack can convince him that if he does his "apprenticeship", he'll be promoted after the new guy comes in, is hugely successful before being head-hunted by the Tims the day before we play a final game of the season league decider against them.

[Reekie_Red]

2 hours ago, RicoS321 said:

That McGhee was largely finished as a manager was no secret either, I don't think you'll find a Dundee fan who doesn't believe that this was nepotism, and the club made no attempt to suggest otherwise either

Got a few mates who are Dundee fans, and they really struggled with McGhees appointment. Got to admit I scratched my head at that one too. The guy is a fkn neep, probably better to serve out his years as the manager of a joke shop 

[wokinginashearerwonderland]

To be fair to Strachan, though, he did not JUST appoint McGhee because he was his mate. It was going to do Strachan no favours at all if Dundee went down so he was hiring someone, rightly or wrongly, who he thought might keep them up. It’s similar to when Cormack hired Glass, again it happened to be the wrong appointment in hindsight but Cormack thought his pal would do a good job for us. In a lot of businesses people will bring in folk they are familiar with and can trust instead of risking it on an unknown quantity.

[RicoS321]

1 hour ago, wokinginashearerwonderland said:

To be fair to Strachan, though, he did not JUST appoint McGhee because he was his mate. It was going to do Strachan no favours at all if Dundee went down so he was hiring someone, rightly or wrongly, who he thought might keep them up. It’s similar to when Cormack hired Glass, again it happened to be the wrong appointment in hindsight but Cormack thought his pal would do a good job for us. In a lot of businesses people will bring in folk they are familiar with and can trust instead of risking it on an unknown quantity.

Absolutely. Although to say that Strachan's view of McGhee wasn't massively, massively skewed due to their friendship would be lacking in credibility. To the point of blindness (McGhee wasn't even on the merry-go-round by that point, he'd been kicked off well before). However, Strachan as Scotland manager came across as a guy that would do what he wanted with no real care for the consequences - like he was incapable of self reflection. The type of guy who might think: "well Dundee are going down anyway, might as well take the opportunity to help out a mate", rather than: "I am going to do everything possible to stop Dundee getting relegated". Which is how a lot of us approach life, so it's not a major criticism of Strachan. I guess we're maybe just not used to seeing that laid back approach in football, where it's normal in other business as you point out. Glass is a great comparison though. I think the difference is that Glass was up and coming, McGhee was down and dying.

[OrlandoDon]

I think we’re saying similar things. Don’t think McGhee was hired purely on friendship, he’s a very experienced manager who had a close relationship with strachan. I’d say it was more really bad judgement on strachan to hire, certainly understand the Dundee fans who were dismayed by the appointment.

I think Robson needs to move on if he’s not going to be an assistant or first team coach. he’s got good coaching experience now, but needs the management experience. Time for a stint at dunfermline, Clyde, Morton etc, somewhere to blood his club and team leadership and the pressures of that. We cannot hire a third ‘good young manager’ with limited experience. We need more than that at this point and I’m certain cormack will go for an older manager with reputation/management experience. 

[Panda]

On 11/03/2023 at 22:05, OrlandoDon said:

Time for a stint at dunfermline, Clyde, Morton etc, somewhere to blood his club and team leadership and the pressures of that.

I disagree. Those clubs would require him to perform miracles to get a sniff of a top job.

Morton, maybe, and it's a big maybe at that, he might get them to the Premiership, but just keeping them up would be a stunning achievement. 

Our fingers have been burnt with appointing Goodwin based on getting St Mirren close to the top six and beating some big teams while on a good run. So Robson would probably need to hope a Motherwell or Kilmarnock took a punt on him, maybe a Dundee United if he's lucky, then he would need to be smashing it out of the park with them before being considered by Aberdeen. 

That sounds like a very slow, arduous journey where a few bad months and the sack somewhere could see his reputation in tatters. Paul Hartley - once tipped to be a future Aberdeen or Hearts manager - is essentially at a backwater in Cove (I get the oxymoron there) after Dundee didn't go to plan, then Hartlepool after slightly restoring his reputation. 

Not only that, but Robson is not going to be learning off Steve Agnew at Morton. 

Even if Robson doesn't get the manager's job, he's too highly thought of at Aberdeen to be told U18s is all he's ever going to get. I expect he'll be first team coach at worst, unless we appoint a manager who insists on his own backroom team.

If that happens, wouldn't surprise me to see Robson pitch up as a coach at a big club in England, perhaps if Agnew gets a job and takes him with him.

[wokinginashearerwonderland]

8 hours ago, Panda said:

Paul Hartley - once tipped to be a future Aberdeen or Hearts manager - is essentially at a backwater in Cove (I get the oxymoron there) after Dundee didn't go to plan, then Hartlepool after slightly restoring his reputation. 

It's fascinating how the fitba fan views managerial failure and kind of writes off people as a result.  Your comment above is spot on with how it works, Panda.

In other sports, I see people win something big then maybe go through a bad spell.  For example, Rory McIlroy last won a major golf event back in 2014 but golf fans still view him as possibly the best in the world because they remember what he has done in the past.  He has failed in the last 30 attempts.  Contrast that with Jose Mourinho, who has had a few poorer years by his standards and people claim he is a dinosaur who can't cut it anymore.  This is the same manager who won the Champions League with Porto and Inter and has even more experience than back then yet a failure or two changes the perception totally.    

 

[RicoS321]

2 hours ago, wokinginashearerwonderland said:

It's fascinating how the fitba fan views managerial failure and kind of writes off people as a result.  Your comment above is spot on with how it works, Panda.

In other sports, I see people win something big then maybe go through a bad spell.  For example, Rory McIlroy last won a major golf event back in 2014 but golf fans still view him as possibly the best in the world because they remember what he has done in the past.  He has failed in the last 30 attempts.  Contrast that with Jose Mourinho, who has had a few poorer years by his standards and people claim he is a dinosaur who can't cut it anymore.  This is the same manager who won the Champions League with Porto and Inter and has even more experience than back then yet a failure or two changes the perception totally.    

 

But managers aren't players, so it's not a valid comparison. They're not responsible for other people's mindset.

You're right though, it's nonsenical. If Mourinho came to the Dons it'd be viewed as the potential second coming (Ferguson being the first). Any claims to dinosaurism would be rubbished and they'd switch back to his past successes and experiences. If he went to Everton, it'd be as you suggest. Similarly when there's talk of managing "big clubs" as a useful factor in guaging a manager too, as if the traits of being a good manager are diluted or augmented based on club size. It must have some impact on the way players respond to a manager too though. The term "dinosaur" is largely a nebulous concept (would McInnes now be regarded such?), but it wouldn't surprise me to find that players buy into it and have a pre-defined view of a manager before he even steps in the door. None of us really know what a manager is like before he's at our club if we're honest, and I suspect that via the coaching badges and such, the overwhelming majority are a fairly homogenous bunch who have little to no impact on the team they're managing at any given time (player recruitment and timing likely have far more weight). There will be the 1% of gems that can consisitently have a side punch way beyond its budget (Martindale the only one up here), but they would be very difficult to pick out once all the other factors have been removed. I remember reading an article about Paul Sturrock not being given due credit as a manager when he was one of only two (I think it was two, Wenger was another) managers who consistently had his teams placed above budget. Every other manager was as expected or worse when averaged out over a few seasons. If we can find a guy that's done above average in a couple of roles within our budget, perhaps in a league that has players that could fit in the SPFL but relatively untapped resource, then that might work for us. I think it'll be about luck though, as it was when Milne was at the helm.

 

 

[Panda]

2 hours ago, wokinginashearerwonderland said:

It's fascinating how the fitba fan views managerial failure and kind of writes off people as a result.  Your comment above is spot on with how it works, Panda.

In other sports, I see people win something big then maybe go through a bad spell.  For example, Rory McIlroy last won a major golf event back in 2014 but golf fans still view him as possibly the best in the world because they remember what he has done in the past.  He has failed in the last 30 attempts.  Contrast that with Jose Mourinho, who has had a few poorer years by his standards and people claim he is a dinosaur who can't cut it anymore.  This is the same manager who won the Champions League with Porto and Inter and has even more experience than back then yet a failure or two changes the perception totally.    

 

Sorry to be that guy, but you couldn't have picked two worse examples.

Rory McIlroy was last year's Race to Dubai winner (pretty big deal in golf) and finished in the top 5 in three of last year's Majors, and top 10 in all of them. 

"Golf fans still view him as possibly the best in the world because they remember what he has done in the past." He's ranked third in the world based on current achievements, so there's no sentimentality going on, he is up there as one of the best in the world.

Mourinho has won Roma their first trophy in 14 years and could still win this season's Europa League and secure Champions League qualification for the first time in five years through the league, which was Roma's aim at the start of the season. 

They both have nothing in common with Paul Hartley.

 

[RicoS321]

5 minutes ago, Panda said:

Sorry to be that guy, but you couldn't have picked two worse examples.

Rory McIlroy was last year's Race to Dubai winner (pretty big deal in golf) and finished in the top 5 in three of last year's Majors, and top 10 in all of them. 

"Golf fans still view him as possibly the best in the world because they remember what he has done in the past." He's ranked third in the world based on current achievements, so there's no sentimentality going on, he is up there as one of the best in the world.

Mourinho has won Roma their first trophy in 14 years and could still win this season's Europa League and secure Champions League qualification for the first time in five years through the league, which was Roma's aim at the start of the season. 

They both have nothing in common with Paul Hartley.

 

You're right, but yet I think we know what he meant? Golf is viewed in majors and football management how a manager succeeds in England, basically. If Mourinho turned up at Everton, they'd see it as a shite appointment and call him a dinosaur. I think what WIASW was suggesting was that managers don't become bad overnight, yet they are often portrayed as such. The example of Hartley is a good one, because there is probably enough to suggest that he is a decent manager (possibly as much evidence as Goodwin, or even Gerrard to be slightly more controversial!), yet his successes are quickly forgotten as he fails at Hartlepool. Hartley is probably a good enough manager for the SPFL, I'd say, but he's not likely to get anything close to that now and yet he's a manager with more experience and more understanding of the game. He's simply failed as much as any other manager. It's a weird system.

[wokinginashearerwonderland]

25 minutes ago, Panda said:

They both have nothing in common with Paul Hartley.

Paul Hartley did once take a holiday to Dubai though and was sitting in the same row of the plane as Jose Mourinho.  Apparently Rory McIlroy was staying at the same hotel   

 

   

[wokinginashearerwonderland]

33 minutes ago, Panda said:

Sorry to be that guy, but you couldn't have picked two worse examples.

Rory McIlroy was last year's Race to Dubai winner (pretty big deal in golf) and finished in the top 5 in three of last year's Majors, and top 10 in all of them. 

"Golf fans still view him as possibly the best in the world because they remember what he has done in the past." He's ranked third in the world based on current achievements, so there's no sentimentality going on, he is up there as one of the best in the world.

Mourinho has won Roma their first trophy in 14 years and could still win this season's Europa League and secure Champions League qualification for the first time in five years through the league, which was Roma's aim at the start of the season. 

What I was getting at is that none of the achievements above come anywhere close to what either accomplished in the past and privately none of the two would argue otherwise.

McIlroy winning the Race to Dubai is nowhere close to winning a major.  Likewise Mourinho winning the Europa Conference League which  is a Mickey Mouse competition that no big club wants to be involved in.

 

 

[Panda]

1 hour ago, wokinginashearerwonderland said:

What I was getting at is that none of the achievements above come anywhere close to what either accomplished in the past and privately none of the two would argue otherwise.

Aye but they're still being successful at the top of the tree. Mourinho is still being linked with top clubs (PSG & Chelsea in the past 12 months) so it's not comparable to my original point, which was that Barry Robson essentially going off the radar by managing in the lower divisions won't actually help him that much, in the same way it's not doing Paul Hartley much good.

1 hour ago, wokinginashearerwonderland said:

Likewise Mourinho winning the Europa Conference League which  is a Mickey Mouse competition that no big club wants to be involved in.

It's about turning them into winners though. And also made him the first manager to win all three of the current European trophies.

If he lands the Europa League & finishes top four, no-one can doubt he's still the special one.

[OrlandoDon]

Absolute silence on the managerial front? Nobody spotted house shopping or at the airport? Haven’t heard John Hughes mentioned in a few days either. Waiting impatiently…