Glenn Gibbons: Perth the perfect place for young managers

LEAST surprising news item of the week was the confirmation that the endlessly impressive Derek McInnes had secured the managership of English Championship club Bristol City.

A consistently appealing, intelligent and articulate figure, McInnes’s work at St Johnstone – promotion to the SPL and a climb to their present, dizzying joint-fourth place in the top division – merely underlines his acumen in the most tangible way.

McInnes would certainly also be bright enough to recognise that, with the Saints owner-chairman Geoff Brown as a partner, he enjoyed football’s equivalent of a marriage made in heaven. The notion, proposed by a number of media commentators, that Brown favours replacing McInnes with an eager, young aspirant manager as (opposed to a gnarled veteran) seems entirely appropriate.

As a long-standing owner of racehorses, Geoff enjoys an experience and understanding of the uncertainty of investment in sport that can be measured in decades.

Having the patience to wait the four or five years it could take an unbroken three-year-old to mature into a proficient jumper of fences precludes the likelihood of his making quick and damning judgements of novice football managers.

Whether McInnes’s successor proves to be (as widely speculated) Rangers’ 41-year-old defender David Weir, or a candidate of similar, unproven background, the new man will be launching a managerial career at the right place.