Reading Keith Jackson yesterday, I was struck by two things.
First, he’s unusually impressed by Derek McInnes, and second, if there was indeed a sit-down between certain journalists and the Ibrox board — where the hacks were reportedly told not to lean too heavily into the notion of the Ibrox boss being sacked — then Jackson either wasn’t invited or decided to ignore his instructions.
His piece was as critical of Philippe Clement as he’s ever been.
Curiously, his article also took aim at Dave King, essentially calling him a liar who misled McInnes when he was previously linked to the Ibrox job.
It seems Jackson’s newfound admiration for McInnes has as much to do with undermining King as it does with any genuine belief in the man’s managerial potential.
Still, Jackson is clearly a gushing McInnes fan, even invoking the name of Walter Smith as another supporter. He seems intent on promoting the idea that McInnes is the natural choice for Ibrox, should Clement get the sack — which, let’s face it, seems likely sooner rather than later.
We’ve covered this on the blog a few times: the Ibrox board is running out of options with Clement if results don’t improve fast. It’s now reached the stage where even the wins aren’t satisfying the fans. The weekend victory was as scrappy and uninspiring as any game they’ve struggled through this season, including some they’ve lost.
The fans have had it, and the board will have to act once things get dire enough.
I’ve long suspected that McInnes would be their fallback option, primarily because, realistically, what other options do they have? No top-class manager will want the job, no matter how much they’re offered — assuming the club could even afford such a salary. Nor would any promising, young coach see it as an attractive prospect; it’s a career killer if things go wrong, as they almost certainly would, with Celtic able to outspend them so easily. This leaves only a handful of desperados and those with strong cultural ties to the club who couldn’t turn it down.
McInnes might be just arrogant enough to believe he could work wonders with a better squad than he has at Kilmarnock, though how many of their players are actually better is up for debate. I’m not as convinced as Jackson is about McInnes’s abilities, but I can understand why the club might find him a tempting prospect.
The amusement for me in Jackson’s piece comes down to this: he’s basing McInnes’s supposed suitability on his record against Celtic. This seems to be the only criterion that matters to him, and the Ibrox fans talking about Gerrard’s potential return also fixate on his results against us as if that alone could spark some sort of revival.
Yet, Gerrard ultimately faltered because of his results against other teams in the league, and that’s precisely what would undo McInnes as well. Focusing solely on performances against Celtic will forever hold them back, as they fail to grasp that the league contains more than one other club.
Clement sits nine points behind us at the moment, and that gap has little to do with our victory over them at Celtic Park. The reason for those nine points is his failure to secure wins against three other teams this season: Hearts took a point off them at Tynecastle, while Aberdeen and McInnes’s Kilmarnock both beat them in the league.
That’s why they’re nine points behind — not because of Celtic.
Unless they find a manager who can consistently beat all the other sides, they’ll continue to struggle. McInnes’s record against us doesn’t impress me.
He manages to pull off a win against Celtic every so often and seems to think this makes him a tactical mastermind. He’s beaten us a couple of times, including at Rugby Park last season, but Celtic had to play shockingly poorly in those games to let him get one over on us. If you look at the starting lineup from that league defeat, it wasn’t exactly a team built to execute Rodgers’ style of football.
Once Rodgers had the players he wanted and the team playing his way, they were no match for us. We went up there at the end of last season, on the night we clinched the title, and blew them off the pitch. They came to Celtic Park on the league’s opening day, and once again, we comfortably dismantled them.
We’ve handed McInnes some of the worst defeats of his career, regularly doing so during his time at Aberdeen, which fed into the Ibrox fans’ narrative about Aberdeen not trying against us.
McInnes also employs a brand of football that’s, frankly, hard to watch. It’s often cynical and thuggish, as demonstrated on Sunday. Perhaps that’s why people like Jackson see him as a good fit for Ibrox — maybe they want that kind of approach from their team. But I seriously doubt that brand of football will deliver much success.
Would McInnes improve them? In a sense, yes. He at least knows how to organise a team and has a coherent plan when his players take the pitch.
But there’s nothing in his career that suggests he’d fare better than the parade of losers, has-beens, and never-will-bes they’ve already tried in that role.
McInnes has a 40% win record at Kilmarnock and has lost almost as many games as he’s won. He has one major honour to his name, a League Cup with Aberdeen over Inverness, and he’s reached three losing finals — two in the League Cup and one in the Scottish Cup, all against Celtic. Yes, McInnes might win the occasional game against the bigger clubs, but he’s ultimately a serial underachiever, well-suited to managing teams with low expectations.
But when the stakes are high, he can’t deliver.
So, I welcome this idea. It might be one of the better suggestions Jackson has come up with, and it could certainly deliver some great comedy moments. It’s a low-impact, low-calibre choice that would signal the club’s ambition is fading, and if we were to expose McInnes and make him look foolish, it’s hard to see where they’d go from there.
At this moment, the McInnes idea has some appeal for them, but if he’s removed from consideration, they’re likely to have no viable Plan B at all.
McInnes would steady the ship for them, but that would be as far as it goes, that same ship would still flounder on the occasions that they have to play us. In the short term, and I am thinking 2-3 years here, he would do a reasonable job while they attempt to get themselves back on an even keel financially, and that in itself is a big ask. What he does have, is a better knowledge of Scottish football than any of his predecessors and, dare I say it. he will sign players that will play for the jersey and show more commitment to the Ibrox cause. I think he would be the sensible choice for them and they would not have to pay him and his backroom team a King’s ransom to get them on board.
Cheer up Derek McInnes, it just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it 🙂
As Johnny indicated, he will tap into Scottish hun players who will die for the jersey. Maybe a few Killie players as they showed their true blue spirit.
And none more so than the guy with the Irish sounding name – Liam Donnelly !
I think the media are likely just finding a narrative to link McInnes since he is a known fan of them.
Find any reason why getting a proper Ranjurs man in the seat again to bring back the glory days.
He has turned them down once before though & they weren’t in nearly as bad a situation then as they are now.
I think there may be an element of McInnes being insulted that he is only linked with the job when they are in hardships. The aftermath of Gerrard & GVB was about stepping up to the next level of manager & now it is about getting the right man in on a budget.
McInnes will maybe get them singing of the same hymn sheet but his time at Aberdeen was anything but steady. There were regular rumours of him sleeping with player partners & general acts of adultry despite being a married man himself.
Can agree totally with that. Imo the only reason mcinness’ team beat us at their ground, is mostly due tae that horrible pitch. On a good grass pitch they would hardly ever get so much as a point against us. He’s a very limited coach imo. In fact, the manager the ibrox club have right now, actually plays a more attackin and probably better style of football than mcinness and they’re still shit. If mcinness goes tae ibrox ah wont lose sleep. And jackson, he cannae even refer tae smith without lavishin praise all over him. Said it before, he manages tae stop himself puttin smith in there with , Stein, Ferguson etc. although ye know he’s desperate tae if he got away with it. But he knows better.
Walter Smith was proved time and again to be a poor manager,
He got away with murder up here because he was with the huns and his solution to everything was to buy his way out of trouble, even when they had run out of money.
He was found out big time in England as a mediocrity.
McInnes would be no better, although his particular stock in trade is to foster brutality in his players, and only gets away with it because he operates in the backwater of Scottish football.
Mcinnes, always the bridesmaid,
Done feck all in his career, even as a hun player he was a non-entity.
Please ohhh please let him get the job. We destroyed his teams at Aberdeen and Kilmarnock, we would destroy his team from ibrox and end his career as a manager
He’d end up managing Saltcoats
Does he now have the necessary prerequisites, James?
Jackson probably seen his lament at celtic after Sundays game when Mcinnes couldn’t contain his hatred of our club, thus making him drool while scribbling with his crayon that this is the reel type of ranjurz man to take over at ibrokes and continue to install what that klub means to the peepul.
Not for his tactics as a manager, more for the rabid outburst.
Jackson is easily led .
A desperate and heading to the dole queue crayon scribbling Sevco fan…
When’s the next set of circulation figures out so I can celebrate the continued downward trajectory with a fine malt whisky !