This next season is potentially our toughest in a while. Hammell looks almost certain to be off and despite re-signing Martyn Corrigan, he will be missing, injured, for at least half the season. Alan McCormack will be very hard to replace. We must get more out of Kerr and McBride and our star striker has scored two league goals since Christmas. Maurice will not have his troubles to seek in keeping us around the mid-table mark.
Next year could be a bit of a struggle for us. It is possible that Maurice will take a while to feel at home in the new job. There will also be some changes of playing staff. As a result, we might just be due for a poorer season. However, should Malpas and Hegarty get us back to where we were under Butcher – knocking on the door of success – they could well be better equipped to push us over the edge into real glory.
The reasoning for this is somewhat hazy, especially given that Malpa' is a managerial debutant and Hegarty seems to be a bit of a Jonah. But if you look at successful clubs, they always have an arrogance and self-confidence that they deserve to be where they are. Look at Aberdeen last year – despite their side being absolutely abysmal, as soon as they scrapped into the top six the fans and management started making noises about pushing for Europe and finishing fourth. This was clearly ridiculous given their squad but can you imagine us in the same situation? We'd have been happy to have made it and enjoyed the beer. Butcher, for all he was great for us, never gave anyone the impression that he believed we could go on to be more successful.
We obviously have severe budgetary constraints so no one expects us to be in the top four or winning cups every year but it does sometimes happen that we have players good enough to succeed and when that happens we need the manager to be banging our drum. The days leading up to the CIS Final gave Butcher the chance to make his mark for our team in the media but everyone reading his comments got the feeling we were beaten before the big day arrived. Perhaps his success with Rangers gave him a view that says big clubs win things, small teams don't. Big clubs qualify for Europe, small clubs are delighted with mid-table while telling everyone how little money they have.
Malpas on the other hand is different. Not only has he won things as a player and graced the European stage; he did it with a provincial club. Yes, times have changed since then, but if he can do the tough job of getting us on the edge of success, he will have a belief and mindset that we can actually progress even further, that there is no reason to stop at sixth place or being runners up. We will need to see how Mo deals with the press in the build up to big games against more illustrious opponents but surely we will not be subject to a repeat of what Butcher regularly did. Malpas may have the qualities to turn a decent side into a successful one – we'll just have to cross our fingers he can build that decent side in the first place!