Aberdeen fans, and dare I suggest the club’s board of directors, must be furious tonight as another day ends without resolution in the Derek McInnes “will he-won’t he” managerial saga.
Having steered the media towards believing this matter was on the verge of an ending, today there’s been utter silence on the matter, even as the latest Ryan Jack appeal has been submitted. Perhaps the two are related; is it possible that the contract offer has been delayed simply because the club has used up all the paper on Jack? His disciplinary cases have put the Amazonian rain forests in acute danger since this season kicked off.
Has the deal already been done, at least with McInnes?
Is this Sevco and their new manager trying to maintain some distance, rather than have people ask the precise nature of when the agreement was put in place and whether he should have been at Pittodrie in the interim? Was the club using this situation to unsettle Aberdeen prior to the two games?
That seems almost certain to have been true and only a fool would deny it. Did McInnes also get a using in that scenario? If he hasn’t already agreed to go there, what does he think of the way his prospective employers have worked to undermine him at the club he’s already with?
In none of those scenarios does Sevco emerge with a morsel of credit; every one of them makes the club look like a disreputable mob, going about its business more like a crime family than a serious organisation. It is impossible not to have total contempt for the way they behave; a contempt which is mirrored in the way they treat other clubs.
Look, everybody is well aware that I have limited sympathy for Aberdeen in this one.
For openers, I believe McInnes is less good than the media would have them believe, but I also think Milne has asked for the public humiliation his club is enduring. But the ordinary Aberdeen fans definitely deserve better, and Sevco’s actions are wholly unscrupulous.
I mean what’s their excuse here? Monday’s not a good day for picking up the phone?
If they are telling the media – and they are, every outlet – that McInnes is the guy they want then precisely what are they waiting for here? They could have contacted the club over a coffee and Kit Kat break. There’s simply no excuse for dragging this out.
Tonight one of their tame hacks – our friend Raman on STV – is reporting that the offer is “imminent.” It’s been “imminent” since this thing started and really, McInnes himself is not blameless here. If he’s not done the deal already behind his current club’s back, he’s certainly not done anything to shut the story down once and for all, which he could have accomplished in a split second by telling the press “They would be wasting their time.”
There seems little doubt that McInnes is waiting for the phone to ring, having accomplished the incredible feat of having closed the gap in second already, without even being at Ibrox. One way or another, he had acted wholly dishonourably and his sniping at the media seems a bit rich when he knows full well that he could have ended the speculation at a stroke.
I didn’t think he would take the Ibrox job; it’s a poison chalice. It’s a managerial electric chair. The club is run by people you wouldn’t buy a used car from. They are a financial basket case. If he’s spoken to people there already that at least explains why he’s not running a mile; otherwise he has to see the total lack of leadership and direction which is apparent from the delays and the silence as one big flashing red light. A top manager would be horrified by it.
The media and the Sevco fans drool in expectation; expectation of what though? He has won a solitary League Cup with the club the press keeps telling us he’s turned into the second biggest in the country. His career outside of Pittodrie amounts to a spell at St Johnstone and a disastrous tenure at Bristol City where his win ratio was just over 20%.
I am not seeing it, and I never have. His behaviour these last six weeks hasn’t been that of a man who can be trusted either; his public pledge of loyalty is going to make him look abysmal if it turns out that it was the bare-faced lie many believe.
Either McInnes masqueraded as the Aberdeen boss these past few weeks whilst his heart was set elsewhere, and deliberately steered his club to two defeats against the team he’s about to join or he’s a guy who’s lost the last two games to an interim manager at Ibrox who had him in his pocket over the course of the 180 minutes.
He’s not a guy I would have within 100 miles of my club.
“If it’s not McInnes do the decent thing!” some of the hacks are shrieking towards Ibrox. Ha! Do the right thing? People at Ibrox? Not in this lifetime.
This thing has all the hallmarks of a dark farce; I’ll tell you right now, he’s not remotely going to last three years as manager if he joins them. If he lasts 18 months he can consider himself lucky. But he won’t get lucky. The myth will crash headlong into reality.
By God, it’s going to be sore for all involved.