Mr. McInnes is relaxed…

Date: 5th January 2025

Mr. McInnes is relaxed…

Losing people in Kilmarnock is not something he would normally accept as, well, normal, but Mr McInnes is sitting with his feet upon the desk looking out across the car park thinking that this might well be a normal event.

After all, Mr Armstrong has not been around for a little while and although his body has been present every time he has had a staff meeting, Mr McInnes has been aware that Mr Armstrong’s mind has been thinking further than the car park upon which Mr McInnes is now gazing.

Picture the scene.

It is a vision of rubble after a storm.

A town credited with being Scotland’s second mecca of sport is one where Mr McInnes has made his mark between the two parks of rugby, one of which, ironically, does not contain rugby and an athletics track have been round which people have run for many a long time without actually getting anywhere.

It now has a circus tent sitting at the side of it for the moment. Mr McInnes being the ringmaster is contemplating life from a temporary upstairs office in the pavilion overlooking the whole of the fields, the track, the tent, the rugby park, the car park and the fields beyond… The weather has not been kind, it has been freeing and storms have brought down trees, pilloried bushes, challenged the flood defences but not brought down Mr. McInnes’s sunny disposition…

Well, it would not have, had he had one…

Mr Armstrong being his most notable and principal performer, is known by some as the best clown that Kilmarnock have ever had. However, for Mr McInnes, Mr Armstrong is the best performer that he has brought into the tent in the recent past and Mr. McInnes should know as he has formed circus troupes of note from the north of Aberdeen to the inhospitable Bristol.

Mr. Armstrong has had them applauding in the bleachers like never before – or at least not for some significant time… His moves in the centre of the ring have brought admiring glances, from other circuses across the whole of Scotland, and it is with some regret Mr McInnes was presented with the possibility that Mr Armstrong was going to leave.

But Mr McInnes, being the man that he is, accepted that Mr Armstrong was not going to be one of his principal players for the next season. Mr. McInnes did not make a rush to his caravan in order to confront Mr Armstrong. Instead, he took a step back, he smiled sweetly and realised that Mr Armstrong would always be known as the former Kilmarnock circus performer that he is and therefore bring some form of reflected fame and glory upon his tent.

That’s not to say that Mr McInnes didn’t try and keep him.

Mr McInnes did actually offer him better terms for the next season, however, Mr McInnes recognised that when Mr Armstrong said no, that the writing was clearly, if not upon the wall, at least being scribbled upon the outside of the circus tent.

Perhaps his greatest worry was that the Tynecastle Tiny Tots Nursery had been in contact and had offered Mr Armstrong an opportunity to become their principal performer as a new initiative.

Mr McInnes had already spoken to others, telling them that he was worried that Mr. Armstrong would only become one of their ever increasingly larger number of clowns and not stand out. However, Mr Armstrong had not, as far as Mr McInnes was aware, taken this on.

And so, that morning, looking out upon the car park of the athletics track, Mr McInnes, realised that this might be the final performance going into January, that he will see Mr Armstrong in is ring in his circus. There was a possibility that by the end of that week, Mr Armstrong would have picked and packed his bags and been off to join another circus east of where they stood because he wanted a bigger platform in a smaller tent.

And so, Mr McInnes sat back, once more, picked up the list of people who were likely to make the afternoon performance, and started to go through it, ticking them off. The squad from which he had to pick and put together his best numbers for that afternoon show were slowly beginning to emerge in his mind as he realised that there was some round about him who might be able to fill in for Mr Armstrong’s absence temporarily, but he would need to start early looking for someone to come in and take his place. Once finished, he put the list down, looked out upon the field of his dreams, sitting beyond the car park, smiled sweetly, lifted his coconut milk latte with sweetener and took a short gulp before he picked up the second document that sat upon his desk.

Peeking out from beneath a number of papers that he had thrown there the night before was the financial profile of the latest season. Having seen that it arrived in his desk the previous week he had put it underneath a number of papers in his in tray, not wanting to depress himself but now there was no way that he could ignore it. Picking it up he looked at the figures as they went from black at the top to very deep red towards the bottom and realised that if Mr Armstrong was going to leave they didn’t have sufficient funds in order to replace him.

The squad that he had looked at hitherto that had made him happy was now looked at again with a different eye. He was not looking to replace Mr Armstrong with what was within it but was looking to see if there was any way that he could cut others within that particular grouping that would allow him to afford something different to bring into the mid part of the performance too and up their game as it were.

After a few moments, he put both documents down on his desk, grimaced a little, took another sip of his coffee and realised there was no way that he could make any signings in January unless he found a pot of money at the end of some form of rainbow and rainbows were scarce in his business, and particularly in Killie.

So, they’re not going to be paying money and therefore they’re not going to be making any form of signings and that means he is stuck with what he has.

With a large sigh, Mr McInnes looked again out across the car park towards the field beyond it and recognised that he may be stuck in this particular cultural backwater for a period of time still to come.

But then again, if it was the second mecca of sport within Scotland, perhaps it wasn’t quite as bad a view as he thought it was at one time in his career.

 

Whilst the author asserts his right to this as an original piece of work there is no evidence, unless you know differently that Derek McInnes takes coconut milk in a latte, so this is clearly a work of fiction.

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Posted in: Latest News

Tags: Kilmarnock, mcinnes, Scotland