THE REVIEW OF THE GAME - HELP US TO TAKE ACTION NOW!
Date: 3rd February 2023
(Photo: @homesoffootball)
This week’s first blog brought to you by our resident writer Donald Stewart.
Courage AND Conviction
Aberdeen, like Manchester United, have a Fergie like hole.
Since the living legend left them, they have struggled to fill it. Even before Ferguson got to Aberdeen and made it into the powerhouse it became, Ally MacLeod and Billy McNeil had brought expectation to the club and the city.
But, in 2023, it is usual for the fanbase and the owners of a football club, once struggle becomes real and the issue become obvious, to sack their manager. It does not take much collusion between the two for a manager to realise that shaky peg is where their jaikets are currently residing. It is, after all, as the cliché goes, a results driven business: if the results are not there, then the manager goes.
When the ball left Jordan Kirkpatrick and hit the back of the Darvel net it must have felt, for most, like a nail being hammered into the coffin for Jim Goodwin. Not so.
Down south we have seen the ruthlessness of some clubs or the realities of being in a cash rich league as Aston Villa got rid of Gerrard and now Everton have relieved Frank Lampard. Both were giants of the English game as players but their managerial careers, starting at Rangers and Chelsea respectively have not really hit any heights similar to where their playing careers had led them. If you look down the lower levels of English football and even Scottish football, you will see well-known names from the pitch, in positions of authority in dugouts, but not often a success in the Premier Leagues.
Playing against topflight players is no guarantee of being able to work out how to play against topflight players in another role. life is littered with examples of shop floor workers, the best at what they do, who could not manage a sock drawer. I see it continually within education where really good teachers get elevated to manage a school with no managerial experience. They often muddle through, but education loses a great educator in the process.
But rather than dispense with the manager after the humiliation of losing to Darvel, they have given Goodwin one more chance. Against Hibernian in the league on Saturday the 28th of January. I am writing this on the morning of the game. You may well read this after the game. Jim Goodwin may be already consigned to Aberdonian history.
But there is something to be learned from the career of the man who’s shadow casts itself over the club, in statue form and in reality.
Oxford United.
Had Manchester United not beat them in a cup competition, it was curtains for Sir Alex Ferguson.
I don’t need to finish the story as we know what came next.
Aberdeen fans will hope that the Hibs game repeats the story.
If Goodwin goes in and wins that, then takes the team on a season where they climb upwards and make a decent fist of the league and then perhaps even manage a cup run, by the end of the year a new cliché will form on their lips – the one about how there are positive signs and things are moving in the right direction.
And so, the decision by the Dons board not to sack Goodwin is, in my humble opinion both courageous and filled with conviction. I do not think he is a bad manager and what he did at St. Mirren, where he was also a bit of a playing legend was an indication that he could truly be a great manager if given the right club. I have no idea if Aberdeen is the right club but Goodwin, like so many before him has the right approach, I believe. I think he is one for the future and if he got the job too early in his managerial career – perhaps like Paul Hartley at Dundee or Ian McCall at Dundee United – then I hope his gamble does not see him tumble out of contention to influence the game beyond the Aberdeen job.
I often see him in our local Tesco’s. He’s not the most famous to visit their store, Jim Watt lives at the end of our street, but hope that the Aberdeen fans, clearly hopeful that by sticking by their guy they will get a better return than you get on a Tesco club card, get what they wish for.
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