Tonight Graeme Murty has dropped another bombshell onto the heads of the already reeling Sevco fans; he will have no role in deciding who the club signs in the January window. His job is to identify “characteristics” which are desirable; it is Mark Allen who will decide what to do next, within the tightest budgets imaginable.
This is absolutely farcical. It really is.
What isn’t made clear – but which seems obvious enough; in fact it screams at you from Murty’s comments – is that this may well be the way forward for whoever is next in the Ibrox hot-seat. There is now a “recruitment department” working alongside Allen, and it’s those guys who will decide who the club signs and who it does not.
The manager’s role in this is simply to coach the team and lobby for his own ideas. But the final say will not be his. The man from Manchester City gets the casting vote.
No-one in the media seems phased by this at all; certainly none are asking the most obvious question which comes to my mind.
Did Derek McInnes speak with people at Ibrox only for them to tell him this is the system he’d be working under?
If so the reasons for his decision not to even enter into advanced negotiations suddenly looks much clearer.
Imagine a Celtic manager was placed under such restrictions?
Every media outlet would be hollering their disapproval and predicting civil war inside Parkhead. Brendan Rodgers would never agree to working under such a system, not if Celtic was the only club interested in his services and this was the only job he was ever likely to get.
It seems pretty clear that these are the conditions under which the next Sevco boss will have to work. A “knowledge of Scottish football” is essential to the role, apparently, and frankly there are only a handful of people with that and who would be willing to work under such a bizarre regime.
Ian Cathro did it at Hearts.
Neil McCann might be prepared to do it here.
The likes of Alex McLeish would not even entertain the idea.
The general consensus seems to be that McInnes had been interested in at least finding out what was in the package at Ibrox, and we have to assume that Sevco hasn’t been completely idle and has at least put feelers out to other parties … if you want to know why a manager hunt takes up to seven weeks – and with no end in sight – this would be a good reason.
We have two separate boards at Ibrox, apparently working at cross purposes. One of them wants the job to go to Murty, the other had McInnes as it’s first choice. Wouldn’t it be God’s little joke if the half that wanted McInnes was the board on which King sits, whilst the one that favours Murty is the one Allen and Robertson helm … and wouldn’t it be just delicious if it was that board which had torpedoed the other’s plans by putting up this barricade?
I’m not saying that’s what happened … but if this was going down at Celtic Park the media would be slobbering all over themselves to be first to ask the question.