Mark McGhee’s plan is to build more than just a winning team in his new job as manager of Aberdeen. A few bridges wouldn’t go amiss in a city that seems to have lost touch with its football club. As he must be heartily sick of hearing, plenty has changed since he was a striker at Pittodrie in the early 1980s — from the players to the directors and the bank balance they preside over — but another, more subtle, difference has struck him since he was appointed in the summer.
The euphoric quality of those heady days under Sir Alex Ferguson has long gone, replaced in recent years by an air of indifference. “I feel as if the relationship between the town and the club has changed,†McGhee says. “The club doesn’t seem to be as important, or held in as much esteem, as it was in our day. Maybe it was only me that imagined it, but it felt like we were the biggest show in town. Now it’s not like that. You feel as if a lot of people, a lot of businesses, are not really taking any notice of the club. We have to do more to get these people back on board.â€
McGhee wants his club, and the people running it, to win back the respect of their community. His predecessor, Jimmy Calderwood, did a decent enough job in five years there, but his failure to convince a core of sceptical supporters led to fears that season-ticket sales and corporate hospitality would be adversely affected. “I think it’s down to results over a longer period,†McGhee says. “There is a malaise, a kind of cynicism about football in general just now, and Aberdeen is no different.â€
His chairman, Stewart Milne, would vouch for that. Rather than throw some of his vast riches at it, he wants the club to wash its own face, much to the frustration of his many critics. “Regardless of how he is perceived, inside Aberdeen and out of it, he has a passion for the club,†McGhee says. “I think we have a good team in there, with myself, Willie Miller [the club’s director of football] and Duncan Fraser [executive director]. These are good people with the ability to do a good job so it’s important that we get it done. We can’t just sit on our haunches.â€
Which is why he, Miller, Milne and the Aberdeen secretary, David Johnston, sat down the other day to discuss every aspect of the club’s operation. It is also why McGhee talks enthusiastically of pressing the flesh during their corporate golf day at Gleneagles. He wants people to look beyond any opinion that they might have of the manager, the chairman, even the players, and value the club as an institution.
“We have to win people over, not only with our performances on the field, but with the way we behave in the community. Clubs nowadays have to do more than just play matches on a Saturday,†he says.
That, though, will be what it comes down to this weekend, when Celtic visit Pittodrie in the opening match of the new Clydesdale Bank Premier League season. Had his wishes been fulfilled, McGhee might have found himself in the visitors’ dugout, but his full attention now is on Aberdeen, which is just as well. After a traumatic pre-season in which his new team were bundled out of Europe by a record-breaking scoreline, he admits that the challenge has been bigger than he expected.
On reflection, he says, the matches against Sigma Olomouc, of the Czech Republic — lost 5-1 at home and 3-0 away — came too soon in the calendar. With Zander Diamond injured, they were short of a recognised central defender, and the strikers could not adapt to McGhee’s system. He likes to play with three up front, all of them flexible and interchanging, but his new charges have struggled to do what Ross McCormack, David Clarkson and Chris Porter did for him at his former club, Motherwell.
“It doesn’t mean they are lesser players, just that they are different and not quite as suited to 4-3-3. I’ll have to temper things a bit, and not try to change too much too quickly.â€
His biggest problem has been in the transfer market where the collapse of Setanta has compromised his ability to bring in new faces. With his budget for the season cut by £600,000, McGhee is struggling to compete with the wages on offer in Coca-Cola League One, never mind the Championship. A long list of players — from Steven MacLean and Jim Paterson to Stephen Hughes and Reda Johnson — already have turned him down.
If nothing else, it has enabled McGhee to “justify†an alarming pre-season, and assure his players that the worst is behind them. With the signing this week of Jerel Ifil, a towering central defender from Swindon Town, and Diamond’s return to fitness, he insists that Celtic need not be feared on Saturday. “Without either of those two players, it would be very difficult, but with those two available, we have a chance of winning,†he says.
As for the rest of the season, well, that depends on who he can sign. “We just need to spend the money wisely,†he says. “If we do that, there is no reason why we cannot be competitive.â€
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