WHAT’S your advice to beleaguered football managers facing the axe? I hear you ask. Well, it’s a funny and fickle old game, this management gig: one minute you’re being hoisted up on the shoulders of players taking the acclaim of the crowd, the next you’re standing in the dole queue with your coaching staff looking like Bobby Carlyle and his crew in The Full Monty. For Jim Goodwin at Aberdeen this week, perhaps the chorus to Hot Chocolate’s soundtrack to the movie is keeping him going: I believe in miracles…
Many of my colleagues over the years would attest to having carried me at regular intervals, and after recent columns bombed so hard they measured on the Richter scale, I was a touch unnerved when I received an email from the sports editor with the subject line “future direction”. Awaiting my summons to his office with the level of trepidation normally reserved for that brief pause before Bobby et all whip off their top hats and reveal all, I was doing the mental gymnastics required of self-preservation on such a scale.
I quickly dashed to the nearest coffee shop and returned armed with a freshly brewed cup to assuage any artillery coming my way during the tete-a-tete, and to my pleasant surprise the meeting passed without a hitch. I received a sort of pat on the tete, and the new direction thing was a suggestion that I write about his beloved Queen of the South, which I of course declined outright on the basis of good taste. Eventually, we settled on the travails of Aberdeen and under-fire boss Goodwin.
Following the Pittodrie club’s dismal defeat at the hands of Darvel in deepest, darkest Ayrshire on Monday night, Goodwin had to sit in his own purgatorial waiting room for two days while chairman Dave Cormack and his head honchos decided upon his fate. Few would have anticipated what happened next.
Having gone into the World Cup break in November on the back of three wins, Goodwin’s side re-emerged a completely different proposition. A backs-to-the-wall 1-0 defeat to champions Celtic at Parkhead upset the chi of supporters who had been enjoying a more rambunctious style under the Irishman than they had been used to under previous incumbents Derek McInnes and Stephen Glass.
Throwing away a 2-1 lead in injury time to lose 3-2 at home to Rangers in the next fixture was an even more bitter pill to swallow. But you could argue losing by a single goal, regardless of the circumstances, in back-to-back league games against Glasgow’s big two is no reason to move to panic stations. But the 3-1 defeat at St Mirren that followed and, in particular, the 2-1 loss to McInnes’s Kilmarnock side were morale-haemorrhaging.
Starting out with a goalless draw at home to a struggling Ross County side was not the New Year’s resolution Dons fans were looking for, although beating St Johnstone 2-0 a few days later topped up a confidence tank running on fumes by this point ahead of a Viaplay Cup semi-final against Rangers. When Bojan Miovski gave Aberdeen the lead at Hampden before half-time, a cup final to savour was suddenly appearing like an oasis in the desert, only for former Pittodrie skipper Ryan Jack to score on the hour mark before Kemar Roofe clambered off the treatment table for long enough to hit another injury-time sucker punch and leave Goodwin once again on the canvas.
So, to follow up that charade three days later with a 5-0 trouncing at Tynecastle against would-be contenders for third place was enough to send fans into a furore.
The Scottish Cup fifth-round trip to Recreation Park in Darvel on a cold Monday night would be no manager’s idea of a picnic. But for Goodwin it was like lining up behind Donkey Kong in Mario Kart and waiting for the banana skins to appear. It felt like the Dons could have hung around until local bard Rabbie Burns’ birthday on the 25th and still not have carved out a chance to score. At the full-time whistle, the idea that Goodwin would survive the night seemed outlandish at best.
But survive one night he did, then another. And on the third day Cormack came out of the woodwork and produced a statement on behalf of the board. Expecting phrases like “by mutual consent” and “we thank him and his staff for all their efforts”, we were instead treated to what amounts to an ultimatum: beat Hibernian on Saturday to save your skin. I believe in miracles now, too.
Come to think of it, back at Herald Towers, that ringing endorsement I received may have been more of a red herring than I first thought. There’s nothing like the backing of the board to put a rocket up you, after all. I think it was the cup of coffee that saved me. As for Goodwin at Aberdeen, maybe he could learn to follow my lead: if you can’t secure third place, you must deliver in the cups. And losing to Darvel in the big one might still leave him stripped of his position in due course.
