I have one abiding memory of Willie Miller, Aberdeen legend, and it has nothing to do with Gothenburg in 1983. Rather, it is of a wet, soggy December afternoon at Fir Park in 1994, when Aberdeen, in the very death-throes of Miller’s time there as manager, were playing some of the most woeful football ever associated with the club of the past 25 years.
I looked down from the pressbox that afternoon when the decidedly unsilky Peter “Silky†Hetherston and other Dons players were haplessly punting the ball around — normally a long ball. In their vivid red, proud Aberdeen were sinking at the time in the Scottish Premier Division, and Miller was soon to be sacked. Yet, watching all this that day, the visiting Dons fans kept up an almost continual hymn of praise to Miller, regardless of the rubbish on the park. It was a reminder that in football, fans forever cherish greatness on the field from any player.
That was 15 years ago. Alas, today, with the waygoing of Miller’s once-famous moustache, I fear a sense of perspective, not to say some vital grey matter, has also been lost to Aberdeen’s director of football. Miller has been exhibiting a barminess recently that is the equal of any of his intemperate outbursts against referees on the field 20-plus years ago. I find myself forced to ask: is the Aberdeen legend losing his marbles?
First we had Miller’s outburst two weeks ago about SPL referee Steven Nicholls, who sent off two Aberdeen players in the 2-0 defeat at Hibernian. Then we had, at Miller’s behest, the infamous “against 12 men†rant on the official Aberdeen FC website (the famous conspiracy among Scottish referees against the Dons — that’s a new one). In recent days, we’ve had Miller continuing in this vein, claiming Aberdeen have been on the receiving end of a number of refereeing injustices over the past 12 months and that “enough is enoughâ€.
Bafflingly, Miller says he would like to see a situation where “football referees can get to at least half-time without having to issue any bookingsâ€. Is it just me, or is this statement truly ludicrous? While we’re at it, Willie, why can’t we just have a situation where teams such as Aberdeen can at least have two or three goals in the bag by half-time, rather than the ongoing torpor of these 0-0 games?
I wish Miller would stop being so fatuous. It does Aberdeen no good to have this type of drivel seeping around the club’s website or in the newspapers. There is no refereeing conspiracy involving the Dons, excepting perhaps those shrinking-violets for match officials who were once so willingly browbeaten by Miller himself on the park. So we need hear no more of this tripe.
I have a hunch that Miller, with his recent comments, is actually coming under a different sort of pressure — not from referees, actually, but from Aberdeen’s increasingly frustrated supporters who want him to start showing much greater evidence that he is capable of taking the club forward as Pittodrie’s director of football. Today, many Dons fans in their early 20s, who have no first-hand knowledge of Miller, the Aberdeen legend, are not so worshipful towards him and, bluntly, don’t find him too impressive in his role at the club. In recent years, there has been a distinct sea-change in some of the attitudes of the Aberdeen fans, and not all of it has been to the benefit of a figure such as Willie Miller.
One example of this is the Aberdeen Supporters Trust. There was a time when the popular Miller was the public face of this movement, as he espoused many of the fans wishes for their club and gave voice to many of their concerns. This, though, is long past. Ever since being installed as the club’s director of football, the last thing Miller has wanted to do is align himself with those who are critical of Aberdeen’s performance off the park, and for a very obvious reason. If you are critical of Aberdeen FC these days, then you have Willie Miller very much in your line of fire.
The Aberdeeen trust recently issued observations about their club’s development under Miller, in which they concluded thus: “There is no evidence of progress being made at the club — rather the reverse.†The trust also derided Miller for his handing of new, lucrative contracts to Jimmy Calderwood and his management team in January 2007, only for Calderwood and his backroom staff to be expensively sacked just 16 months later.
“That [the handing of a new contract to Calderwood] was a big mistake,†wrote the trust, before concluding that, under Miller, Aberdeen was “no longer improving†and was “ineffectiveâ€. These and other tart comments about his work left Miller smarting at a club where he is more used to being lauded and feted. But they also reveal the Aberdeen support will not suspend their critical faculties forever over the great players — Miller principal among them — who brought their club such glory in the 1980s.
The gist of many Aberdeen fans’ complaints is this: why can the club not be taken forward financially? Why does Aberdeen appear so perennially strapped for cash? And why, as director of football, has Miller allowed their club, if anything, to go backwards, not forwards, over the past 18 months?
Miller, doubtless, will have his own answers to these questions. One of them, for sure, will be the fact he is constrained himself by the tight financial belt Stewart Milne, Aberdeen’s wealthy owner, places around the club. Yet Miller would be better served taking his withering glare off SPL referees and, instead, focusing it on his own area of jurisdiction. He’s got a hard enough job on his hands without commenting on alleged shortcomings of others.
