Aberdeen urged to make Barry Robson decision - 'I don’t know what the chain of command is here'

Willie Miller has urged Aberdeen to come to a decision regarding Barry Robson’s future before the season resumes next month.

Barry Robson has impressed during his time as Aberdeen caretaker manager.

The interim manager has been in charge since Jim Goodwin was sacked at the end of January and has led Aberdeen to four victories in six outings. The latest was a 3-0 victory over third-placed Hearts, where the fans sang Robson’s name. Club legend Miller thinks it would be unfair to keep the former midfielder hanging on and wants new chief executive Alan Burrows to act before Aberdeen’s next game against St Johnstone on 1 April. If Robson isn’t a serious candidate for the vacancy Miller believes he should be told now.

“The new CEO will have been in for four weeks by the end of the month,” said Miller. “You’ve got a director of football as well – it used to be their responsibility to go and source the next manager – not the CEO. But I don’t know what the chain of command is here (at Aberdeen). They’ve probably had enough time to look round and decide if Barry is the right man or if they’ve got other candidates. And if they need a wee bit more time then take a wee bit more time. But I don’t think they should be just letting it run for much longer. There comes a point when you’ve got to make that decision. They can give to it to Barry until the end of the season – and that’s fine but I’m not too sure if that’s good for Barry – or they could give him it permanently.”

Miller stressed that he feared for Robson if the club stopped short of making him permanent manager. “You wouldn’t like to see anything happen like Liam Fox or Stevie Hammell, for example,” Miller said, with reference to the case of two young managers who stepped into the breach at Dundee United and Motherwell respectively earlier this season and are now out of work. “They are all doing that (stepping up) for the benefit of the club as well as their own benefit. But they are putting themselves out on a limb to take that responsibility at a very early stage of their managerial careers. I think the club has got to take into consideration, when they are making that decision, that he (Robson) doesn’t get hung out to dry.”