Fire still burns for Scott as Stirling job turns to ashes

He’ll be 64 in January. But, he might well wonder, who will still want him after the abrupt end of an 11th stint as manager?

“I’ll just do the usual,” he says. “I’ll wait and see. You apply for jobs that are vacant. But it is difficult.”

As for the fire in his belly? “It’ll never go out,” he answers.

Scott has suffered at the hands of autocratic clubs owners and now he has endured a trial by fans who have also been invested with authority due to their financial commitment.

The ideal working conditions are hard to obtain for football managers but Scott might argue it is somewhere in the middle of the above two extremes. At Dundee, where Calum Melville reigned supreme on account of his supposed financial clout, panic set in after a poor run. Result? Scott was sacked. At Stirling, after a more sustained period of unsatisfactory performances, a decision has been made on a rather more democratic basis. Result? Scott has left, by “mutual consent”.

And on this occasion it truly does seem to be a case of both parties deciding that a change might be the best way forward. Stirling scored their first league goal since 1 October on Saturday but it wasn’t of much consequence; they lost 4-1 to Airdrie, the team who brought the last of Scott’s three spells in charge of Dundee to an end in March 2010, when the Dens Park side sat at the top of the First Division.

Scott hasn’t got quite the same case for feeling hard done by at Stirling since the side have been at the wrong end of the Second Division for much of the season. However, the severe financial constraints at the club have to be acknowledged, as do the circumstances whereby Scott was being directed by a fans’ committee. Scott found that a model often described as being an optimum arrangement had its own frustrations.

“Fans can play a big part in making it hard for managers and coaches because they only see the results at the end of 90 minutes,” he says. “They don’t understand what is involved. Half the time I think they think you are telling the players to go out and lose games. This was my first involvement at a club where the fans own the club rather than one or two owners.

“What frustrated me is that the fans, because it is their club, could do something about the situation – ie they could all invest more money. But they didn’t want to do that. You end up working with no money.”

Scott is alert to the very different situations he faced at Dundee and Stirling, although, in the time since he left Dens, the club have moved towards a supporters’ trust model.

“They were both very different circumstances,” he says. “In the first situation you had a man who portrays himself as megabucks and who is going to use his megabucks to sort the club out.

“It’s all right for an initial period and then the longer it goes on, the less he does, and the less he wants to put his money in. Then the whole thing crumbles.

“I can understand a one-man show where they run out of money but, at Stirling, you are talking about a football trust of 2,400 people, who all contributed to buying the club from Peter [Mckenzie]. If each of them chipped in another few bob that could add up to a lot of money. I suggested it to the powers that be. They said it would not work. John [Blackley] and I are disappointed that things have not worked out better. But we wish them all the best.”

As for his future plans, Scott does not rule out a return to Dundee if present manager Barry Smith, a long-time friend, should ask him for any help. Scott once said he wouldn’t step back into Dens Park unless as manager of an opposing team.

“Put it this way, the main people who got rid of me at Dundee – [Bob] Brannan and Melville – are no longer there,” he says. “So never say never. I said what I said because, at the time, they were still there. And I was angry at everything. But they are no longer part of the club. It’s a different situation.”