MARK McGhee, as he contemplates the isolation of unemployment, is at the same time practising his German just in case Deutschland should have need of his coaching skills.
But his views on the city of Aberdeen – not to mention the chairman of its football club and its players and fans – could never be misinterpreted in any language. You won’t find them in the local tourist board brochure, that’s for sure.
Here’s a taster: “I’m sitting here not because I’m a bad manager but because I made a bad decision. I will never, unless it’s in a professional capacity, look in the direction of Aberdeen again. Any association I had with them ended the day I walked out.”
Let’s go back a couple of hours to source such vitriol. McGhee has promised to pick me up at Brighton station. In the event, there’s a change of plan and he instructs me to meet him outside a *** shop. Wearing designer sunglasses, he arrives on foot. Is he formatting revenge of some kind?
After all, I was highly critical of his stewardship of Moth, so I’m surprised he has agreed to this interview. I tell him he has my admiration for this alone. His reply is almost insulting. “First of all, I never saw it [the article]. But I wouldn’t have been interested. Whatever you wrote and whatever you were saying, you were probably wrong anyway. Seriously.”
The temptation is to ignore the arrogance and examine the reasons behind the remark. Now, McGhee presents himself as the kind of guy who wouldn’t squeal even if you applied hobnail boots to his backside. But surely there’s vulnerability somewhere?
Anyway, the sparring has begun in earnest as we sip morning coffee in the trendy Lanes district. I tell him I always endeavour to be objective. This brings a slight concession. He asks me to recall the gist of my article.
Where should I begin? I had suggested he was the pariah of Pittodrie and claimed he was aloof and showed no interest in the players. It was claimed that his assistant, Scott Leitch, was a bully. And Sone Aluko, allegedly, had suffered rough justice. Where was I wrong? “So you wrote that without speaking to me? It’s all nonsense,” McGhee says. “I had Sone’s mother up from London, sat her down and went through the whole thing.
“Listen, he f***** off to Nigeria [ahead of the Under-20 World Cup] without even telling the club when we were at a crucial part of the season. So, as a board, we sat down and decided we’d get him back. Sone Aluko and I have no issues. In fact, I recently tried to help him get to Sheffield Wednesday. It’s a f****** scandal!”
I’m not quite sure what is scandalising McGhee at this moment. But let’s return to the fact that he’s here in the first place. He doesn’t appear to be a bearer of grudges. “Friends have said to me that I should remember for longer, but it’s just not in me. Maybe it’s a weakness and other people can use that to their advantage, if you like. But I just don’t think that way. I move on quickly.”
Has he succeeded in moving on from his most recent setback? McGhee points out that he doesn’t really want to talk about Aberdeen and you can understand that reluctance. Who would want to be reminded of unmitigated disaster? He replaced the popular Jimmy Calderwood in June of 2009, and was gone by early December the following year, having won only 17 games out of 62. But, hey, it would be like talking to Liam Fox and failing to raise the subject of travelling companions. Inevitably, then, we return to the dissonant theme of Pittodrie. And, in spite of what he says about not holding grudges, you can smell the resentment.
PURSUING the maxim that leadership comes from the top, let’s begin with Stewart Milne. Can McGhee talk about the chairman’s role at the club? Sure he can. His eyes look for the heavens. “Within the club, there is no strong influence: nobody whose character is strong enough to preside over everybody. I think, in many ways, it does have to come from the chairman. I have to say to him that he has to be seen around the football club.
“Stewart is down there a couple of times a week at boardroom meetings. He gets into his car and goes. He never walks through the offices or asks people how they’re doing. Within the club, he has to be the influence. He’s the man. Maybe he just underestimates that. Maybe he doesn’t understand that.”
The hitherto invulnerable 54-year-old is now betraying his vulnerability. “I wasn’t comfortable [at Aberdeen]. Five minutes after I was at Motherwell, I had Betty, the secretary, being like a mum to me. I had people looking after me and out for me.
“John Boyle introduced me to his friends in Glasgow, who were then making sure I had the right place to live. I was invited round [to their houses] because they knew my partner Maria was doon the road [in Brighton]. I was just made to feel instantly welcome and accepted. You felt that everybody there wanted to make you the best you could be; they wanted you to succeed.
“I didn’t feel that at Aberdeen. In fact, from a players’ point of view, there was some sort of resentment towards me, a resentment I didn’t understand. I imagined I was coming home, but it wasn’t like that at all. I needed to jazz the place up: it needed two million volts. The girl on the desk couldnae look me in the eye: there were wee cliques. It needed to change.”
McGhee offered ideas for change, but Milne allegedly ignored them. Surely, his European Cup-Winners’ Cup medal gave him some currency with the fans? “The new generation of Aberdeen supporters couldn’t give a monkey’s about Mark McGhee and the Gothenburg Greats. I could have been somebody they’d never heard of walking in the door. The past was of no relevance whatsoever.
“It made me feel very isolated. For the first time in my career, I felt it was me, Scott Leitch and Colin Meldrum against the world. There was absolutely no empathy, whereas at Motherwell, they were falling over themselves to be nice.
“When my baby Archie was born, they were all bringing in presents. I go back there now and they all want to see pictures of him. I go to Millwall and the new chairman seeks me out. I go to Brighton [another club he managed]. I’ve got a relationship with these people. But none at Aberdeen.”
Let’s return to the players. McGhee, you suspect, would love to talk in specifics about guys he believes have been at Pittodrie too long. Instead, he generalises. “At Motherwell they embraced 4-3-3 and all the other things I wanted to do with them. I went to Aberdeen and it was like talking a foreign language. There was non-cooperation in terms of getting a system going, and the training was, well… ‘training on a Sunday? We don’t train on Sundays’.”
What about the allegations of bullying? “Don’t get me wrong: there were times when I had to reel in Leitchy because he’s one of those boys who gets emotional and angry. It was in danger of spilling over into something that couldnae be. But it was about them, not Leitchy. We got feedback that they were going to the sponsors with stories. But, f*** sake, Fergie [Sir Alex Ferguson] used to throw things at us. These charges are embarrassing.”
McGHEE’s sigh comes from deep in the diaphragm. “You get people who enthuse a room. You know them and catch their enthusiasm. Coisty [Ally McCoist] is one. Then you get other people who suck the life out of a room. Aberdeen is full of people who are drainers. Until it’s cleared out and there’s a freshness about it, it’s not going to get any better. And no-one, not even Craig Brown, who’s a good manager, can do anything until they change that.”
But didn’t McGhee know all there was to know about Aberdeen before he joined? Surely he did his homework? He looks embarrassed here. “If I made a mistake, [it was that] I never dealt with Stewart Milne up until the point I was at the club. Remember, this was a club I held dear to my heart and because of my trust, I thought they held me dear. I thought I didn’t need to do the due diligence.
“I thought I’d go up there and sweep them away. So I didn’t go into either the implications of the exact state of affairs and how good or bad the squad actually was. So, yeah, I should have thought twice before taking the job. But there you go: you live and learn.”
Today, Aberdeen visit Celtic. McGhee took his Aberdeen to Parkhead almost a year ago and they were slaughtered 9-0. You imagine the horror of it is still being distilled in his head. But it has not put him off working again.
“I’ve been brushing up my German a bit, trying to stay modern. The engine is still running. The other week I was at seven games in eight days, looking at what’s new, until such times as somebody decides to take a punt with Mark McGhee again. My feet didn’t touch the ground when I left Pittodrie. But I wasn’t in mourning or anything. I would have applied for a job the day after I left had the right one been available.”
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Originally Posted by Pacman1903
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