Scott Arfield lifts lid on East Fife appointment and Rangers mentors he will lean on as Steven Gerrard reacts
From Europa League final to part-time football for 38-year-old player-boss
The wisdom of anyone with ambition picking Bayview as a platform is spelled out to them as soon as they walk in through the front door of East Fife’s stadium.
The club wasted little time jumping on the fact Mikel Oyarzabal once featured in a friendly at Methil when the Spaniard became a world champion this summer. “Methil to the Mundial” runs the heading above two photographs in the reception area. One is of a then teenage Oyarzabal appearing for Real Sociedad in a friendly against St Johnstone played at the stadium in 2015. The other is the striker lifting the World Cup after the 1-0 victory over Argentina in New Jersey.
"Choose Methil, conquer the world" is the less than subliminal message, one that is surely appealing to a young go-ahead manager such as Scott Arfield. East Fife have returned to a modus operandi stretching back to their late 1940s glory years of giving bright young coaches a chance.
Like then, when the 36-year-old Scot Symon was recruited, Arfield is a former Rangers player still in his 30s who is desperate to take his first steps in management.
The landscape is rather different now although East Fife has continued to be a fertile place for budding young managers, Gary Naysmith among them. One of his Scotland jerseys hangs in the Legends Lounge, on which Naysmith has written: “To East Fife FC, Thank you for my first managerial role”. Maybe in time Arfield, who played 20 times for Canada, will gift one of his old international shirts if he goes on to bigger and better things.
Right now he is simply concentrating on learning his new players’ names and getting himself match fit. The 38-year-old’s last match as a player was towards the end of last season for Livingston against Aberdeen. Arfield took over as manager on a caretaker basis following Marvin Bartley’s departure and restricted himself to a watching role.
This won’t happen at East Fife, although he will require a few weeks to get up to speed. The League One club, currently sitting sixth, have bagged a very decent player into the bargain. This wasn’t the case when they appointed his predecessor Dick Campbell, who was 70 at the time.
Slightly surprisingly, Arfield has never met his legendary predecessor. “I have never crossed paths with Dick,” he said. “He is the one figure I did want to come across and didn’t.
“I have met loads of players throughout my career who have great stories about him. Listen, we have probably got different ideas about how the game should be played. But there is one ball and two goals…”
That’s not to say Arfield has something against those perceived to be from the old school. One of his mentors, who he says he still speaks to regularly, is John Hughes, who was manager when Arfield was breaking through with Falkirk. “I have known him since I was 15 and he is giving me great pointers,” he says. “He has worked in part-time football and so knows everything about it.”
This is clearly one of the challenges facing Arfield and all those like him who take a perceived backwards step into the part-time environment in order to go forward.
“That is something I spoke to part-time managers and ex-teammates about who have gone into management,” he says. “Boys have got jobs. This is a hobby. I don’t expect them to purely and utterly dedicate their lives like I have done for the last 20 years.”
But he does expect a degree of professionalism, something he will be bringing despite the inevitable frustrations of training just twice a week.
Four teams maintain close to full-time operations in League One, meaning East Fife must overachieve to prosper. Arfield is enthused by this challenge as well as by getting his boots back on. Agreeing to also play wasn't a stipulation for him getting the job. “There wasn’t any demand on it,” he says. “Any time I have been interviewed I have always said that I always want to continue playing. If you are playing, you are closer to the action.”
East Fife chairman Liam Anderson hailed the “massive appointment” for the club, and it’s true: not many teams at this level can claim to have a European finalist in the dugout.
Arfield came on as a sub for Rangers against Eintracht Frankfurt in the Europa League final in 2022, scoring a penalty in the shootout defeat. He aims to speak to Steven Gerrard, who signed him for Rangers, before too long but has already had plenty of support from Michael Beale, who followed Gerrard to Aston Villa before succeeding Giovanni van Bronckhorst at Ibrox.
“I certainly will be picking his (Gerrard’s) brains,” he says. “I loved Steven's calmness as a manager. I loved it. When he spoke, people listened.” Beale, who is currently fighting for his job at Belgian club Zulte Waregem, was one of Arfield’s first ports of call.
“‘Mick’, who perhaps didn’t have the reputation at the time, was very hands on,” he says. “Steven was more in the background, an authority figure.”
Beale was “delighted” when Arfield phoned to tell him the news. “He knows you cannot just go in at the top. Look at Steven Gerrard, one of the most iconic footballers there’s been.
“He has to go into an academy before coming up and winning a league in Scotland with the help of someone like Mick. He (Beale) knows it is a great situation. I think I am one of the first to get into management from that (Rangers) core group. He is delighted to see it happen.”
Whether Gerrard, who met up with Arfield at a recent Old Firm clash and slightly surreally commented “Yes Scotty lad” on an East Fife Instagram post announcing his appointment, takes in a game in Methil in the near future remains to be seen. He might be barred entry: World Cup winners only.
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