Roy has an out of body experience
Staggies may regret not sticking with old head
I DON’T know Malky Mackay very well.
But from the outside looking in, he seemed like a manager who knew what he was doing at Ross County and had the experience that club needs at the present moment.
His team played high-energy football, had a threat at the top end of the pitch with Yan Dhanda supplying the ever-eager Simon Murray and Jordan White. Eamonn Brophy knows where the goal is.
County sit 11th but you couldn’t push a cigarette paper between the majority of the Premiership clubs and if they win their game in hand, at home to St Mirren on November 28, they’d be just three points behind sixth placed Kilmarnock.
Which makes the decision to get shot of Mackay a strange one.
You’d have thought chairman Roy MacGregor would have been delighted to have a manager of proven calibre and who would not have been operating at a team of Ross County’s size if he had not been carrying considerable baggage from his time as manager at Cardiff. But as usual, panic seeps into a boardroom when the spectre of relegation looms.
And although Mackay somehow kept County in the top flight last season, coming back from a threegoal play-off deficit to defeat Partick Thistle, it wasn’t enough to keep him in a job.
Why? Maybe events down the A9 played a part. Ross County saw St Johnstone, who looked doomed under rookie manager Steven MacLean, replace him with Craig Levein, who became the Premiership’s oldest and most experienced boss when he took the reins at the age of 59. He’ll keep them up, of that I am convinced. But there’s that word again – experience.
Every business in every walk of life needs it but some don’t realise it until it’s too late. In football, in Scotland at any rate, some clubs are beginning to cotton on to the fact that what is needed is a guy who has been there and done it – who has the knowhow to keep calm in a crisis because he’s been through many of them.
There are only two Premiership managers in their 30s, and one, Stuart Kettlewell, turns 40 next year. Steven Naismith at Hearts, aged 37, is the baby of the bunch and is it any wonder a man who was managing the Jambos’ B team in the Lowland League has floundered at times this season and his club’s supporters remain unconvinced?
Derek McInnes and Tony Docherty at 52. Brendan Rodgers is 50. Philippe Clement hits that milestone next year. David Martindale 49, Stephen Robinson a year younger. Barry Robson 45 and Nick Montgomery at 42. All of them have been around the block, even if in Docherty and Robson’s cases, they haven’t been managers in their own right for long.
It all points to clubs wanting stability, common sense and a cool head when the heat is on.
At the other end of the scale, look at Clyde – sitting bottom of League Two with the prospect of dropping out of Scottish senior football looming large as the Lowland League crooks its finger at the Bully Wee, who have won one game in 12 matches played in the lowest tier.
What has their board done? They’ve brought in Ian McCall, who has fought more fires than Red Adair.
McCall is 59. Same age as Levein. And just as the latter will save Saintees, the former will douse the flames licking Clyde’s ankles. Experience, you see. It’s hard to beat. Something Ross County might just find out to their cost.
You’d have thought they’d be delighted to have a manager of his calibre