How are the old boys doing?
FORMER MANAGERS
I make it there are three former Motherwell managers who are still actively managing in British football and all with differing fortunes at the moment.The three I am thinking of are Alex McLeish at Rangers,Eric Black at Coventry and Davie Hay at Livingston.
McLeish is still a bit of a media darling who seems to avoid any criticism no matter how bad his team are doing.The media,up to now,have always mentioned how he took us to Second place in the League,but forget that we finished 8th,8th and 9th in the next three seasons before he jumped ship to Hibs.
At least some of them are now waking up to the fact that there is pattern in McLeish’s career - he takes over someone else’s team and does well without changing anything and then struggles when he has to sign his own players.As Paul Forsyth said in a Scotland on Sunday article,“ For McSkimming,Roddie and Hendry,read Emerson, Ostenstad and Capucho at Rangers ! ”.Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Where does McLeish go from here,can he wait until Celtic lose O’Neill, Larsson and the others who are ageing and cash in on their rebuilding programme.Will he ever get a major Premiership job,or will he have to go backwards in England to make it to a Manchester United?I think that he could end up at a team like Spurs before he gets a major job down there.
Eric Black has fallen heir to the Coventry job now that Gary McAllister has decided that he wants to spend time with his family.It’s hard to know what to make of Black as a manager as his spell at Motherwell was too short.But he has already picked up Eric Deloumeaux from Aberdeen,is this the start of a French Revolution at Coventry in the same manner that we saw at Fir Park.Maybe this is the job that will confirm whether Black is one of the top up and coming young managers in the game.
Davie Hay’s spell at Motherwell was a lot longer ago, and his one season in charge was a great one to be part of as we romped to the First Division title scoring a hundred goals in the process.He had a successful spell at Celtic and is now at Livingston and is carrying on his excellent coaching record there.It is probably fair to say that, of the three I have mentioned, he is the one with the safest reputation as he has been successful with every club he has been at.
I have excluded Billy Davies from this as he is only an assistant manager and not carrying the load himself, although his boss is another former Motherwell employee in Craig Brown who was once upon a time our Assistant Manager.Tommy McLean is also still active in Youth Development at Rangers, and I’m sure Harri Kampman will have a job somewhere !!
Graham Barnstaple
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