Saints appeal, says McGhee as he tries to placate Dons

Former manager backtracks on remarks, writes Martin Hannan

IF you thought former players treat their status as “club legend” lightly, you should have joined Mark McGhee for his conversation with journalists at Musselburgh racecourse yesterday.

First things first – while he was playing his part in the latest Scottish Cup draw, the news broke of the end of St Johnstone’s putative deal with Sligo Rovers manager Paul Cook to replace the departed Derek McInnes. The club could not agree personal terms with the 44-year-old Englishman.

Put on the spot, McGhee stated that he had not applied for the St Johnstone job, but did not deny that he was interested in possibly going to Perth. He told the BBC: “St Johnstone are a fantastic club, who have been left a really good legacy by the outgoing manager.

“I haven’t managed to acquire a new job yet, so I am looking and I’m trying. I still feel I have something to offer.”

He added: John Hughes, Jimmy Calderwood – all these guys who are out of work are equally qualified to take a job like that.

“It will be up to St Johnstone where they go, because they’ll have their own ideas about it.”

Later in the afternoon, McGhee was still saying that nothing had happened in relation to him and St Johnstone.

By then, McGhee had opened his heart after a few days of newspaper stories denigrating him for his weekend remarks about Aberdeen, the club with which he won three Cup and one European Cup-Winners’ Cup medals, and which he managed with (his own words) “no success at all” from June 2009 to December last year.

McGhee had been quoted in a lengthy interview as saying there were problems with cliques at the Pittodrie club, that he did not receive as warm a welcome there as he did at Motherwell, and that chairman Stewart Milne was perhaps not “hands on” enough at his club.

Though he did not say that he had been misquoted, McGhee claimed that words he had spoken “off the record” had been misrepresented. McGhee tried to insist that his views were very different to what he was quoted as saying and said that his position as a legendary player had been jeopardised. He expressed hurt over what had happened, and said: “I have no problems with anybody at Aberdeen, I have never said a bad word about anybody at Aberdeen. I had a really difficult time there, but I got out.”

Now living in Brighton, where he used to manage the local club, McGhee was keen to mend fences in the Granite City, admitting that he deserved to be dismissed.

“I have been sacked before and got other jobs,” said McGhee, “but Aberdeen was slightly different because everywhere else I had been sacked after having had success and then perhaps had a tailing off and leaving. Aberdeen at no point went well, so eventually I deserved the sack.”

The former Wolves, Reading, Leicester, Millwall and Motherwell manager pointed out that he had joined Aberdeen after success at Motherwell which had led to him being suggested as Celtic manager. “I had also been offered the Hearts job,” said McGhee, “and I turned it down out of loyalty to John Boyle and the Motherwell supporters, which I felt was the right thing to do, and I also as good as ruled myself out of the Scotland job because I said I wouldn’t leave till the end of the season. But, after two years, I had to show my hand about the Celtic job and then Willie Miller came and offered me the Aberdeen job.

“I probably didn’t do my due diligence well enough. Every other job I had a right good look at what’s going on, how the job would work, how the squad would work, but there I thought ‘it’s Aberdeen I’ll be fine, I am an Aberdonian legend,’ and then I went there and it wasn’t fine.”

His words on chairman Milne were supposed to be positive, said McGhee: “The chairman of a football club has the ability to be a huge influence on everybody at the club, and I think Stewart underestimates his own value.”

McGhee’s sense of humour is never far away and he joked: “It took me two weeks to get out of Aberdeen because of the snow, and it took me a month to get my car out. But, once I got out, I was ready to start again.”

Jobless a year on, he is now even more ready.

McGhee was speaking after assisting SFA president Campbell Ogilvie to make the third round draw for the William Hill Scottish Cup. Later in the day, he was joined for some of the afternoon’s racing by fellow former manager John “Yogi” Hughes, who has been similarly unemployed since his departure from an under-achieving Hibs last year after a spell in charge at a club where he, too, was a legend as a player.

Both men commiserated with each other on their continuing absence from the game. They still have a lot to offer football, and that St Johnstone vacancy beckons, with McGhee of the pair the more likely to be looking at it with interest.