Originally Posted by
InversneckieDob
The issue of McGhee, Strachan and McLeish are complicated.....and, in my opinion, very different.
McGhee, by all accounts, was a bit of a knob back in the day when he played for us.
Heard that from a few sources, including a neighbour of his.
That's OK, people who make it right up there in sport are often not the best balanced people and are usually too single minded to be .....nice.
He is possessed of a level of (misguided) self belief as a manager that strays well into arrogance (the "Wikipedia" comment being a great example).
Another fine display of this was the comments about raselickbyrawaybutbigman when he became manager here.
It smacked of "they're lucky to have me here...... and they know it, so I can be honest in my opinions of this job and the selick job, they'll understand and appreciate my honesty".
Self-aware much?
Strachan is driven and, I think, tends to live in the moment in an emotional sense.
It doesn't strike me that he has any emotional attachment to any of his past clubs. I read an interview with him a while ago when he said that he didn't feel any emotional pull to Hibs, his boyhood club, any more.
Again, possessed of huge levels of self belief, but I've heard tales, albeit second hand, that he is a decent bloke away from the white heat of fitba.
His time at AFC was a job to him, at job at which he never gave a midgie's ba hair less than his all.
I think you could say that about every one of his fitba jobs.
I dinna think you can say he hates or dislikes Aberdeen, he's just completely indifferent to us.....as he probably is to Dundee, Man Utd, Leeds, Coventry, Southampton, Celtic....etc.etc.
He has certain ideas about the standards of Scottish football and players who ply their trade in Scotland, and picks raselick players cos of their European Cup involvement.
McLeish is the one that tears me up most. The ambition is the common factor among the three, but him going to deadco hurt me bad.
Boyhood r*****s fan? Well, he moved to us at 15 and stayed his whole playing career here (virtually) so he was a Dandy longer than he was a h*n.
He saw that shower from our side, saw the media treatment of them (and us) from our side, read what The Sun said about him and Willie in the aftermath of Durrant..........yet he still went there.
I also genuinely believed he DID have an emotional bond with the Dons beyond it being a job.
Mebbe he did/does, I dunno, but ambition ruled again.
I think the thing about Fergie was that he surrounded himself with men as driven and single minded as he was.
This is why he has fallen out with so many of his most trusted men down the years.
People that driven, that focussed are seldom nice folk........capable of loyalty and selflessness.
Idols having feet of clay, t'was ever thus.
So let's treasure Willie Miller, Russell Anderson, Brian Irvine.....even the much maligned Andy Considine, hopefully Graeme Shinnie a decade from now, and the others like them.
Good guys for whom we were enough......more than enough.
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