Pitiful Aberdeen are the Nottingham Forest of Scotland

Graham Spiers

 

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It is always worrying every time you hear a manager confess that he has just asked his failing players if they think there is anything he should be doing differently or better. Mark McGhee is only the latest to perform such an act, which is a sure sign that the Aberdeen manager is now under a heap of pressure.

 

McGhee’s team have lost four and drawn three of their last seven matches — a truly miserable run. Of course, a further nadir was reached in last week’s elimination from the Active Nation Scottish Cup by Raith Rovers at Pittodrie, but a wider gloom is now closing in on McGhee and his players. Bluntly, the Dons manager will be sacked if he carries on like this.

 

Maybe this was why a grim McGhee emerged from the bowels of Falkirk Stadium after the 3-1 defeat to the Bairns on Saturday to make the following, doomed pronouncement. “I’ve just asked the players if they feel there is anything that I could be doing differently,†McGhee said. “By this I mean, the way I do things, and the things that I ask them to do. We had a brilliant, frank discussion.â€

 

For some inexplicable reason, when I heard McGhee speak like this, it took me straight back to 1993 and to another SPL manager — and a thoroughly doomed one, as it transpired — who also spoke in such terms.

 

It is now long-forgotten — except by the long-suffering Stuart Cosgroves of this world — that John McClelland, the former Leeds United, Watford and Rangers player, was once the manager of St Johnstone. It was an inauspicious period in the Saints history, with McClelland’s style of management quickly nosediving among his players and the club’s supporters.

 

After one particularly bleak afternoon at McDiarmid Park following another Saints defeat, I always remember what McClellland said to us at the post-match press conference. “I’ve just spoken to my players and I’ve asked them, ‘Is there something that you think I could be doing better or different?’ †he said. “I’ve had my say, now it is the turn of the players.â€

 

It proved not to be a useful exercise, trying to get the St Johnstone players to diagnose why McClelland was being such a failure. He was gone within three weeks.

 

It seems to me a sorry pass to reach when, having bawled your players out, you then go to them for the remedy. No doubt Mark McGhee feels this is a novel or refreshing way to go, and I don’t blame him for groping around in the dark in trying to find a solution. The dismal Dons look utterly hopeless these days and it must be galling for their hardworking manager.

 

Aberdeen as a club must be driving their fans away in their droves. Indeed, you can already see the anecdotal evidence of it, with crowds this season of 8,000 and 9,000 now being evident at Pittodrie. Against this, McGhee must feel distraught that he has next to no money with which to rebuild his team.

 

“We’ll hopefully get to the summer and then be able to make the necessary changes that are required for the club,†the Aberdeen manager said on Saturday night. By this, did McGhee mean “changes for the better� And with what? With a standard of player salary that you would find at the likes of Gillingham and Southend?

 

There is one ray of light for Aberdeen amid all this gloom, and it can be found 400 miles to the south of the Granite City. Nottingham Forest are very similar to the Dons, in terms of a golden period over a quarter of a century ago that established the club among the elite of Britain and Europe. Since then Forest, like Aberdeen, have rued their cruel fate, and never been fully able to accept their fall from grace.

 

Yet Forest have now found the answer and it is quite startling. Principally, it is not to do with money. It is to do with having a keen, bright, effective manager at the helm. Billy Davies, in relative terms, has had no war-chest to open at Forest, yet this gifted manager, just as he did at Derby County, has hoisted Forest back among the contenders for promotion to the Barclays Premier League.

 

For Forest supporters there is no other place to be; and many of those will say that, with their club’s incredible pedigree, Forest should be regulars among the English Premier League’s top ten. It is the same with Aberdeen, whose fans, while not being deluded that 1983 can ever be repeated, also see their club as among the Scottish elite, and want back there.

 

The Billy Davies experience in Nottingham is telling for Aberdeen. A good manager can make an enormous difference to a club, with his craft and his ideas. Mark McGhee, in looking for a solution, should try racking his own brains more, rather than those of his players.

It certainly seems like an eternity doesn't it big red!

With regards to the article it certainly seems balanced enough. I was worried it was going to be an article that just felt sorry for jc. Thankfully there was some realism there.