DON’T BREAK JAMBO GARY’S HEART, ANN

BY ANDY RITCHIE

THE buzz is that Craig Levein is set to return to Tynecastle as manager under the new regime.

If so, it will be an act of sheer madness. Hearts are on a roll under Gary Locke and the signs are extremely encouraging.

Locke is a Jambo through and through. I’m sure if you cut him he would bleed maroon.

He knows the club inside, out and he’s respected. The fans want him to stay and, more importantly, so do the players.

Several of them have come out publicly to pledge their support and that tells you the manager has the respect of the dressing room.

Consider the facts. Hearts were behind the eight ball right from the very start. Financial turmoil, the threat of liquidation, a 15 point deduction for going into administration, and a signing ban before a ball had even been kicked.

What hope did they have of avoiding the drop? Not a snowball’s chance in hell. It was always just a question of when their fate would be sealed.

That must have been extremely demoralising for all concerned. The psychological damage of knowing they had to win six matches just to put points on the board must have been huge.

It was as if once the death sentence had been pronounced all that remained was for the date of execution to be set.

But Hearts earned several reprieves before being forced to bow to the inevitable and that says much about the spirit in the camp.

It would have been easy for the players to have thrown in the towel and given it up as a bad job. Instead, they rolled their sleeves up and tried to achieve the virtually impossible and Locke must have been the inspirational force.

Just imagine if Hearts had begun their current remarkable revival six games sooner. We might have been talking about the Great Escape.

As it is, Hearts are heading for the Championship with all guns blazing and Rangers will do well to avoid a bullet or two next season.

I am not saying Hearts will sweep straight back into the top flight, but they’ll certainly be a handful.

Circumstances forced Locke to give the youngsters their head and they are a year older and wiser and less prone to naivety and basic errors.

Young players are also resilient and the recent winning run will have boosted their confidence no end.

There’s no shortage of talent either as far as I can see. Locke clearly has an eye for spotting potential and he’s exploited that talent.

So, what would be the point in changing the manager before Locke has even had a chance to test himself on a more even playing field?

He deserves another season at least for the splendid job he has done during one of the most difficult and testing periods in Hearts’ history.

 So, my message to Ann Budge is this: Stick with what you have rather than risk fresh instability.

Talk of instability, what the hell’s going on at my old club Morton?

One truly did fly over the cuckoo’s nest when Kenny Shiels oversaw a humiliating 10-2 defeat at Hamilton.

Kenny fancies himself as a psychologist. After that result the entire management team and players should have been forced to consult a shrink.

At least Shiels did the honourable thing and fell on his sword - or at least we are told he resigned. But it was clearly one of those ones - jump before you’re pushed!

The signing of Garry O’Connor alone was grounds enough for being given the sack. Those amongst the older generation of Morton fans who questioned my fitness and training methods must be misty eyed at the memory of the goals I scored when they look at O’Connor.

But while Shiels was culpable, players and officials must also shoulder part of the blame for the club’s dramatic decline – even the chairman.

Douglas Rae has done a lot for the club and deserves due credit from the people of Greenock. Without his financial support, Morton might well have ceased to exist.

But he appointed Shiels in the first place and bought into Kenny’s mumbo jumbo so can’t escape criticism.

But I’ve heard on the grapevine that Morton is going to remain full-time next season and that’s heartening if it is the case.

However, I fear for the long term future of the club, for they aren’t going to find it easy to claw their way out of League One.

Attendances have plummeted in the wake of this season’s results and it’s going to be extremely difficult regaining the confidence and support of the locals.

ANDY RITCHIE ON HOW RACING MAN SIR ALEX BACKED THE WRONG HORSE

WATCHING Davie Moyes being hung out to dry on the Man Utd washing line wasn’t a pretty or pleasant spectator sport.

But the resident cynic in me admits that the wee bit of compassion I felt for him in his moment of humiliation has evaporated already.

He was never the right man for the job in the first place.

And I’d go as far as to say that the timing of his sacking was wrong - he should have been away by last Christmas!

Someone once told me that it pays to be a failure in football. Well, in that case, Moyes has been a spectacular flop.

So, think of the situation not so much as a man picking up his P45 but of a man winning the Lottery. He’s a wealthy guy already, but he’ll soon be spectacularly richer.

He’s just bought a £5million ticket that nobody else in the country will buy.

Save your compassion for those who really need it: there’ll be plenty of wee souls around Britain who’ll be losing their jobs - and will only have a week’s money with which to feed the family.

The fact is Moyes will take his big pay-off, attempt to bury his disappointment in the white sands of Mauritius or somewhere similarly exotic, and move on to another football address, if not such a fancy one as Old Trafford.

Someone else, perhaps the imperious looking Louis Van Gaal, will come in as a replacement. And life will move on.

Well, it may not move on quite so peacefully if, as reports suggest, the combative Roy Keane enters the equation as his assistant. But that potential Punch and Judy Show is reserved for future viewing.

What I’m still trying to figure out is why Moyes came to be at Old Trafford in the first place. When he was at Goodison, he had good sides and he had not so good sides. He did spend some time avoiding relegation a little while back, but he had time in abundance.

There were negatives: some wag labelled him “Dave the Ditherer” for an alleged failure to make up his mind about the recruitment of playing staff.

Aside from that, he had always been a defensive manager and any time Everton did anything was by sheer weight of numbers.

Sure, they were hard to beat; they went to places and sneaked goals - but this was a completely foreign ethic to Manchester United. They never played like that; they never were like that.

So, hereabouts, we should turn our attentions to Sir Alex Ferguson, who picked his fellow Scot out as the Chosen One.

I’d imagine Fergie is suffering deep disappointment right now, not to say embarrassment.

Oh, nothing will ever take away his achievements as a Manchester United manager, nor what he did for the game as a whole in the process. But this move turned into a barely watchable reality show.

Surprise, Surprise could be renamed Astounding, Astounding.

Look, if Fergie never handled failure very well as a manager, the important thing was he could always put things right the next week.

Unfortunately, the appointment of David Moyes is now a stain on Ferguson’s curricula vitae that will never be erased - it’s resistant to all known detergents.

Nobody knows, or maybe is unlikely to know, the exact nature of the relationship shared by the two men. Until Fergie comes out with another book, of course. But I imagine there’ll be a bit of him that says: “I shouldn’t have got involved in this - I should have left it to somebody else.”

What we do know is that the appointment equalled a catastrophic mistake. And it was a catastrophic mistake to imagine that the Man Utd way of playing would have been continued by Moyes.

If I remember correctly, it was mooted in some quarters some years ago that Martin O’Neill would be the one to replace Fergie, but it was blown out of the water by the suggestion that O’Neill’s style would be incompatible with United’s.

Yet that was conveniently forgotten when Moyes was appointed.

Oh, to have been a fly on the wall and witnessed their relationship over the last few months.

Maybe Fergie thought if he had a fellow Glaswegian on board, then he could influence things. But, obviously, with the way the new arrival went about it - sacking Fergie’s backroom staff and alienating his squad by talking openly about making six or seven signings - suggests he didn’t want that influence.

I remember coming across something similar when I went back to Celtic Park as a scout under Tommy Burns. We were sitting having a cup of tea and Jaffa cakes and there had been a suggestion that Billy McNeill should come in and oversee things with Tommy.

Tommy shook his head and I asked him why.

“’Cos Big Billy would have been asking the washer woman which soap powder she was using to wash the strips,” he replied.

“And maybe the groundsman wouldn’t have been cutting the grass the right way. At the start, Billy’s input might have been 20 or 30 per cent; by the time his feet were under the table, you’d find it was 60 or 70 per cent. I couldn’t have that.”

Hey, who knows in this daft game of ours, maybe Fergie thought that Moyes could adapt himself and grow into the job. But the truth is that everything he touched in those ten months in charge has turned to dust.

I remember one match early on when the camera panned in on Fergie and his face was set to fizz. You could almost see steam coming out of his ears.

There was no width on the park, everything was concentrated in the middle of the park. But that was Big Davy’s way of playing: narrow everything down, sit back for 70 minutes away from home until opportunity presented itself.

I mean, there was a time when going to Hull and winning 1-0 was a great result for Everton. But this was Manchester United. A bit of style and class was demanded.

It was apparent that the majority of players were not singing from the same hymn sheet. How did Patrice Evra and the boy Buttner feel when they knew the manager was trying to sign Leighton Baines?

They weren’t going to get the toolboxes out if noises were being made that they weren’t going to be there long. He kept making it known in public that some players weren’t good enough.

So Fergie, whatever the input he has in the next appointment, has to live with the memory of this fiasco. If he‘d gone into proper retirement and let them get on with running United, perhaps voiced his opinion if and when it was asked for, it would perhaps be a very different story,

But he seems to like being the doyen of managers - the Godfather, giver of gifts.

Well, this one's come back to haunt him. He‘s a racing man is Sir Alex and, in racing terms, he backed the wrong horse.

THE END IS NIGH FOR LENNON, BUT GRIFFITHS SAFE FOR NOW

By Andy Ritchie

THEY are taking bets on Leigh Griffiths being booted out by Celtic, but the smarter money is on a much bigger name being gone before the start of next season.

I’m referring to the most important man at the club, the manager, Neil Lennon.

If Lennon has sense, and he’s got plenty as far as I can judge, he’ll have reached the conclusion some time ago that he has very likely achieved just about as much as he can at Celtic Park and that it’s time for a fresh challenge.

In fact, Lennon may even be regretting not having made a move a year ago when his stock was trading higher following the team’s Champions League successes.

There hasn’t been a queue of club chairmen from England battering down the doors to entice Scottish managers south in recent years, which is a sad indictment of what they think about the general state of our game, and Lennon is clearly aware that he will have to sell himself to an extent.

So it didn’t surprise me to see him appear on Match if the Day 11 the other week, when he gave a polished performance talking purely about the playing side rather than about all  the other aspects that come with being an Old Firm manager.

He managed to sound astute and appeared more at ease discussing tactics, formations and playing styles, so if Lennon’s ploy was to try and advance his case, it worked a treat.

The timing was spot on and those chairmen and owners contemplating managerial change over the course of the next few weeks cannot help but have been impressed at the way Lennon came over.

I imagine there is going to be a bit of movement in the Premiership before the World Cup kicks-off.

The dogs in the street are already barking out that there has been at least a degree of contact between Norwich and Lennon, but the Canaries won’t be the only club in the market for a new manager.

Newcastle cannot possibly be happy with Alan Pardew after everything that has gone off on Tyneside and all is clearly far from well in the Aston Villa camp.

Not only have you got the situation with two members of the senior coaching staff under investigation for alleged bullying, results under Paul Lambert haven’t been great either.

The most attractive option is a Premiership club where Lennon’s personal terms would be far more lucrative than if he was managing a Championship side, so much may depend on which teams are relegated.

But I believe that whatever is eventually on offer to him, Lennon has reached the stage where he feels he’s done enough at Celtic Park and that the grass is greener on the other side.

And I’m prepared to stick my neck out and predict that Neil Lennon will no longer be the Celtic manager come August.
But I believe Griffiths will still be with my old club when Celtic begin their defence of the SPFL title.

Contrary to the apparently widely held belief that Griffiths is facing the axe, I don’t think he is even close to being sacked - at least for the time being.

Yes, Griffiths is an idiot. No, chanting racist abuse is not acceptable.

But he is clearly not the sharpest cookie. He also appears easily led when drink is involved.

But a Hibee having a pop at the Jambos and vice-versa is nothing new, and calling someone a refugee hardly constitutes a hanging offence.

I’ve had 50,000 calling me a lazy, fat bastard, so does that mean if I am able to identify the guilt I am free to sue them? I’ll better put in a call to Donald Findlay, just in case.

The SFA has done its best to inflate the situation while Celtic have thrown a fire blanket over what was a drink-fuelled outburst deserving of a heavy slap on the wrist, a club fine, and a warning to Griffiths as to his future conduct.

But if there is a next time that might turn out to be a very different matter as he would be judged to have thumbed his nose at those who are trying to help save him from himself.

Others, players and managers, have committed worse acts and escaped relatively unscathed, but the SFA looks to have turned the Griffiths affair into something of a crusade.

They should have left it up to his club to deal with Griffiths and Celtic, in turn, should order him to find suitable accommodation in the west away from the temptations of life in the capital and the influence of his mates.

If Griffiths can screw the nut, he’s good enough at domestic level to score 25 goals a season. But the real testing ground is Europe and whether he’s good enough to do it at the next level.

Meanwhile, I wasn’t one of those surprised by St Johnstone’s achievement in reaching their first ever Scottish Cup final.

I had a sneaking feeling beforehand that they would dump the Dons due to Aberdeen’s a lack of youth and energy in the middle of the park.

St Johnstone is a team who keep snapping away at the opposition and in Steve May they have some who is always liable to score.

Barry Robson and Willo Flood were running on empty after an hour and as soon as Saints equalised there was only one team going to win, in my mind.

It’s good that we have two teams from the Tayside region in the final for a change and it should turn out to be a decent enough spectacle.

Dundee United beating Rangers in the other semi-final was no surprise either. Even playing at only 50 per cent capacity, United were able to turn over the opposition with relative ease.

And I am sure that didn’t come as a shock to anyone who had watched Rangers the week before in the Ramsdens Cup final.

SIMPLY SAVAGED BY SFA SHEEP

By Andy Ritchie

WE - meaning Scotland’s youth team - were about to go off to sunny, sunny Spain and I was having multiple orgasms at the very thought of it.

Hey, I was only 16 and therefore full of fun and devilment. A round-robin youth tournament lay ahead, but first I was intent on basking in the imaginary limelight.

So, when a photographer from the Scottish Daily Express approached those of us who played with Celtic and Rangers, asking if he could snap us with our reading material, we were up for the cup.

A couple of the guys had chosen Shoot magazine to accompany them on the trip. Me? As we were having a bit of a carry-on, I’d gone straight for the top shelf and got myself a copy of Playboy.

Just when the photographer was about to go to work, an SFA official called Ernie Walker arrived on the scene and called me over. He asked me how my parents would feel if they saw me reading a lads’ magazine. Just as important, he asked me how Celtic FC would feel.

He reminded me that I was representing not only them but the Scottish nation. You could call it an impact talk. He uttered only about three sentences, but the message hit home immediately like a bolt from a crossbow.

I hate to imagine what would have happened if Ernie hadn’t been on the scene at Glasgow Airport that day. There I’d have been, back page on the Express, making an absolute backside of myself.

But I was lucky enough to come across an administrator who knew his way around potentially embarrassing situations.

The question that ought to be asked now is this: where are such like-minded administrators in today’s world?

Press the fast forward button and pinpoint one of today’s embarrassing situations. Stop at Leigh Griffiths, a few long-necked Budweisers on a none too lazy Sunday afternoon and you’re on the money.

When he received his summons to appear at the SFA for that video, I immediately thought of Ernie Walker.

Ernie, of course, went on to become secretary of the SFA for 13 years. How would he have handled that situation with Leigh and his singing Hibs supporting pals? Somewhat better, I would suggest, than Vincent Lunny. Ernie certainly wouldn’t have needed a compliance officer to bring people to order.

Lunny is the c.o. of the ruling body. Here’s a guy who seems to appear every time something like this happens. He must spend hours trawling the websites to find out things about fitba players.

What’s this man doing? Is it a real job? Couldn’t he be doing something better and more constructive than picking through the bones of a lot of nonsense.

Don’t for one moment think I’m attempting to vindicate Griffiths. I’m not. He should get the proverbial boot up the backside for what he did - there are no two ways about that. 

But this officious rigmarole seems OTT. I think the SFA are just being petty. It does smack of someone trying to justify their existence.

The punishment should have come from within the player’s club. Hopefully, getting rapped over the knuckles by his own hierarchy would mean a lot more to him - well, it should mean a lot more - than being savaged by an SFA sheep called Vincent Lunny.

Which brings me back to my point about this chap’s role: jobs like this take money out of the game and we struggle at times to provide things that would be beneficial either to the top end of the professional gig or the amateur end.

But the SFA inevitably provide money for some things that are trivial, But we shouldn’t be surprised, for they are trivial people.

Look, I don’t know a lot about Stewart Regan, but I don’t see a lot happening within the game that I could congratulate him for. No, I can’t say I go to sleep counting the accomplishments of Stewart Regan.

Anyway, these punishments seem to be selective, rather than across the board. Morton’s Rowan Vine apparently made uncomplimentary signs to Cowdenbeath supporters when he was sent off the other night.

I didn’t see Lunny sending a letter to the club asking Vine to come up and see him. Is it only because there were 500 people there and really nobody gives diddly squat about it?

I don’t remember, either, Paul McGowan being lettered by the SFA for being drunk and assaulting policemen. No, it’s my belief that Lunny looks for nonsense and is getting his 50-60 grand a year and Vauxhall car for absolutely nothing.

He should only be getting involved if the club involved don’t do anything, if indeed they thumb their nose at the situation. That’s the time the shadow of Vincent Lunny should fall over proceedings.

Hey, I know times have changed, but one phone call from Ernie Walker would have diffused this situation. I can hear what he would have said: “It’s not in the best possible taste,”

As a result, the morals would have been improved, and it would have made a better impact on the individuals who were causing the situation.

This current SFA hoopla was all so unnecessary . It needed someone just to stop guys like Leigh Griffiths in their tracks with some sensible advice, rather than putting them on the back page.

Maybe Griffiths thinks it’s smart because it’s on the back page. But it’s not smart and he should know that. But I still contend that it was up to Celtic, not Lunny, to deliver the sermon.

WHY LENNON HAS RUN OUT OF OPTIONS

By Andy Ritchie

SO, now the annual skittle competition that’s called the Scottish Premiership is over for another season, the questions will inevitably begin.

In fact, they began in my house this morning when a teaser was thrown at me: did I expect both Neil Lennon and Derek McInnes to be with their respective clubs next season?

A long intake of breath was needed over the cornflakes. I replied that I’d only expect one to be there. My questioner was relentless. Which one? If I were given one of those hard-earned pounds that Aberdonians seem to swear by, well, I’d put it on McInnes being at Pittodrie next season.

But, as for Lennon being at Celtic Park? I think not. I’d imagine he’s looked at the equation and decided: “I’ve got to get out of here - it’s time to move on.”

The noises that he may want to go have been flying about for some time. I suggest they will become more prevalent now that the title race has been copper-bottomed with that runaway victory over Partick Thistle.

So I think it’s just a case of playing the countdown game. Who could blame him for looking down the road? Hey, he’s left a legacy by joining the select managerial band of Willie Maley, Jock Stein and Gordon Strachan, who had won three or more titles in a row.

But trying looking for reasons why he should stay is another thing altogether. Anyone who recognises their onions know that, without Rangers in the mix, everything is a hollow victory. Lennon will recognise that better than anyone.

He’ll also recognise the fact that times have changed and there’s a whole different ball game going on with Celtic these days, And it’s official. It’s gone public. In the old days, it was an accepted fact that the Charlie Nicholas and Kenny Dalglish types of this world would eventually play in England. But it was never mooted in public.

Now it’s been discussed openly that the policy is to bring in good, under-the-radar young players, get them developed before selling them on for as big a profit as possible. You’ve got to look at it and say it’s the state of Scottish football. And it’s also the state of Celtic.

You hear from some quarters claims of an upsurge in the game. Really? Well, up at Aberdeen, for instance, there’s a guy who wasn’t good enough to play in the first team last season and who in fact was loaned out to St Johnstone.

It’s now being stated that Peter Pawlett’s an absolute certainty to be playing in England in six months. Yeah, he couldnae get a game for them a year ago and they were undecided if they wanted to keep him. Now he’s the new Willie Miller, or, to put him more in context, Eoin Jess.

So, I’d imagine for the benefit of Neil Lennon and his career as a manager, it would be beneficial for him to be looking at the bigger picture. And that, I’m afraid, is England. There’s nothing radical about that, though, He’s done four years and they’ve generally been good years.

Things have changed for him. It’s only natural if you’ve been in a job this length of time that the rough edges have been knocked off. In Lennon’s case most of them have gone, even if some took a while to disappear.

I think the change in attitude could be traced back to the time he was attacked at Tyne castle - and also the time they beat Barcelona and had a decent run in Europe. That escalated his worth to the football world.

And I think people were making suggestions to him then that it might take a different type of managerial mindset for him to get a job down in England. That’s when the rough edges began to disappear.

It was like he was saying to himself: “If I do have any aspirations as an individual, these issues need to be addressed.” And I think that’s been his purposeful plan as Celtic manager ever since. And, in fairness to him, he’s done very well.

Perfection is nearly impossible, of course. You hear him being interviewed by local reporters in Scotland and then by those from down South. There’s a marked difference for the better, as far as the latter is concerned. Look, it’s not that he’s so much more refined, it’s just that he’s more acceptable to the masses. I sometimes wish he’d add those little touches up here as well.

I remember at the Aberdeen game at Pittodrie when Celtic’s winning streak ended. If he’d put on the diplomatic hat that he wears for the international media, it would have been better. As it was, he was less than complimentary about Aberdeen. A wee bit more humility was required in that situation.

But, on the whole, I think the changes in his character have been for his well-being. Whatever, if and when the day arrives that he makes a move down South, it might be beneficial to him if he leaves a couple of pieces of luggage behind him.

Would he be successful in a far more competitive division? I see no reason why he shouldn’t be. He probably has a head start on many others who are coming to the Barclays Premier League from abroad. He has a grounding in England, knows the game and also the aspirations of the supporters - unlike some who have gone there recently.

Look, when you went to manage in England years ago, it was a 25-piece jigsaw. Now it’s a thousand piece affair and remember you’ve got to put all those pieces together. I don’t see why Lennon can’t make a fist of it down there. Father Time, of course, is the only man who will tell.

HAS THE McGINN BOBBLE BURST?

By Andy Ritchie

NOW that their League Cup euphoria has been exhausted, fans of Aberdeen FC are perhaps entitled to ask: whatever happened to Niall McGinn?

The Northern Ireland forward was a bit of a performer last season, with 21 goals to his eternal credit. In reality, he was just about the Dons’ only goal-scoring option.

The difference this season has been next door to astounding. Yes, he’s managed to stockpile nine goals so far, but a study of their chronology makes for slightly more disturbing reading.

Three of these goals came early on in the campaign. Then he went 11 games firing blanks, before securing another six from eight attempts. Cue another serious famine: up until the League Cup Final, he had gone 14 domestic games without embarrassing the opposing goalkeeper.

Last Sunday, the chance to be a hero arrived all over again when, late on in normal time, he rounded an Inverness CT defender and discovered the goal virtually at his mercy. The ball, unfortunately, seemed to bobble and the chance was squandered.

A certain fairytale became a possible nightmare, and some people were left wondering whether his bubble, or bobble, had finally burst.

The bacon rations were only saved by the fact that the Dons clawed their way to victory on penalties in front of 43,000 of their magnificent fans. Significantly, McGinn was not one of the four penalty takers.

Now, I wouldn’t wish to sound like a wise man after the event, but I predicted to anyone who would listen last summer that Niall would find it difficult, if not damned impossible, to scale such goal-scoring heights again.

He has never been what I would consider to be a natural goal-scorer. He is sometimes a scorer of great goals, but not a great goal-scorer.

His career with Celtic and Brentford, however, has always suggested that he prefers to be out wide. And in recent games, I’ve noticed that he often retreats into areas 30 to 40 yards from goal. These can be comfort zones for some players, but they’re not the natural habitats of born strikers.

I can’t abide the term “one-season wonder” because it’s too trite and probably a bit insulting. But sometimes it conveys at least a little bit of the truth. Is it possibly applicable to McGinn? I would say that if he ever scores 21 goals again, most of them would have to be from the penalty spot.

Not that this somehow transforms him into an ordinary player. He is far from that

My point is that you must possess a certain mindset to be a scorer. Go back in history and you find it everywhere. Denis Law had that certain something. Joe Jordan, too. Andy Gray and Joe Harper - they were around when the gifts of arrogance, courage and confidence were handed out.

Coming up to date for a second, Billy Mackay has it - forget that missed penalty kick on Sunday, and Stevie Mays is also blessed with it. And I know I bloody well had it.

In my senior career, I received many compliments. Jimmy Homes, my colleague at Morton, used to say I was the coolest man in the penalty box. Dundee United manager Jim McLean said I came close to genius.

Seriously, though, I used to think about scoring goals before every game and I didn’t mind how they came about. I remember being farmed out to junior club Kirkintilloch Rob Roy at 16 from Celtic.

I was partnered by a guy called Jimmy Murphy, who’d scoot around like a burst hose pipe. He provided the sweat and the graft and all the activity that leads up to the scoring of goals.
At one point he put a cross into the box and there was I, standing with my back to the goal. It didn’t matter - the ball went into the net via my arse! Trying calling that cool!

I only played 17 times for Rob Roy before I was recalled to Celtic. But those were times I needed to score. Like against Vale of Leven. I was a boy - and we were facing a team of full grown men - yet I scored five times in a 7-2 victory.

Listen, I don’t know what I did for Jimmy Murphy, but I know what he did for me and I still appreciate it. Don’t know if his appreciation comes my way, mind. Maybe he’s sitting someone sticking pins in my doll right now!

From what I know of him, Niall is a nice guy. He’s not a problem player with an outsize ego. Goals or not, he makes valuable contributions to the team, with his link-up play and his passing, and as far as I know, his commitment to the cause is not in doubt.

But he’s sort of made a rod for his back in many ways. He doesn’t need to be a goal machine, but he’s got to get into that mindset of old, restore his confidence and get back to the basics of where he was when times were good. I’m sure his manager, Derek McInnes, will provide encouragement for him in this way.

So, too, will those magnificent fans. What a show they put on last Sunday. And I would hope that they turn out in massive numbers this weekend when Aberdeen face Kilmarnock. They should welcome their team home in style.

A return to McGinn goal-scoring form would suit them admirably. I imagine that the player longs to place the cherry back on his cake. I don’t know if what happened to him last season came as an almighty shock to him: a bit of a thunderbolt.

But I’d love to see more from him. And if he wants the best advice available about how to get himself back on that standard, then he needs to look no further than Joe Harper, a true Aberdeen legend.

How many goals did Wee Joe score in his career? Google tells me it was 232. And I tell you this: it was all about hard work.

He didn’t score as many as that by cracking jokes with centre-halves.

My best advice to Niall McGinn would be to sit down for half an hour with Wee Joe and soak up any advice he offers. If anyone can put him right, it’s Harper.

The Day Fergus Sought Darkened Rooms and Temazepan - By Andy Ritchie

YOU would have to get up early of a morning to put one over Fergus McCann. Better still, best not to go to bed in the first place.

Money, of course, was a major importance in his life and he duly treated it with particular reverence. While Celtic fans celebrate the 20^th anniversary of the McCann-style revolution, however, it may be worth remembering the one occasion Fergus’s fingers were scorched, if not quite cremated.

Back then, football, to me as chief scout, was a priority. And it was likewise to the manager, Tommy Burns. We were in a hurry to get out there and buy players. To shop in what you might call the “big stores.”

But Fergus’s priority was putting the club back on a sound financial footing, so if you worked in the recruitment department, that wasn’t so great. Tommy, meanwhile, was experiencing exasperation We had signed Pierre van Hooijdonk from NAS Breda for a million pounds. Then along came Andreas Thom, from Bayer Leverkusen.

I can’t go into too many details about that particular £2.2million transfer in 1995, but let’s say that once it was all done and Fergus saw how football worked, I think he had to be led into a darkened room and fed a couple of Temazepan.

There was money flying everywhere. Fergus said that the longest talk he had about the deal was with four people from the Bank of England, who represented the player. Thom had come out of East Germany and he needed to make money quickly; he was paying massive amounts of his salary into a pension plan.

But I think that financial arrangement put Fergus off all the rest of the deals that had to be done during his time at Celtic Park. I think he’d been dragged over a barrel as far as Thom was concerned. But, fair play to him, he learned oh, so quickly as Paulo Cadete and Paolo di Canio would learn.

I certainly liked him. He didn’t mess about. Ever. A spade was a shovel with that wee man. I don’t think you’d want to stand too long with him at a bar, engaged in jovial conversation, but he did what he said he would do. My memory tells me he put £8 million in and took £40million out. He built a stadium and stopped Rangers from winning ten in a row.

Sure, having to deal with Hooijdonk, Cadete and Di Canio obviously had him reaching for his pills. I mean, Hooijdonk came in quite a quiet boy who would hardly lift his head to speak to anybody. But, within a couple of years, prompted by the adulation he got at Celtic Park and no doubt by his agents, he was complaining that his wages weren’t good enough for the homeless.

Certainly, there was a bigger change in Pierre than there was in Fergus in that time. The latter understood what footballers are like. They give the impression of loyalty to the fans with their kissing of the badge, but in reality the big ones are managing directors of their own companies. Wee Fergus was one of the first to see through that nonsense. I think he could spot a fraud very, very quickly.

But I’ve got to say he did me a couple of favours. He came to see me in my wee office one day and said: “I’ve got a bit of a situation here. I’ve got two people coming to interview me, Chic Young from the BBC, and Davie Provan from Sky. I don’t want them putting their heads together, so when they arrive put the BBC in the boardroom and ask Sky to wait down the tunnel.”

My son was working in the reception at the time. I went down there and told him to see that the orders were carried out. Some time later, I met him and he told me that Provan had wanted to go into the boardroom and not down the tunnel. When he insisted that this was the arrangement, he claimed Provan told him to eff off.

We cut a long story short here, I was buzzing with anger and caught up with Provan. Angry words were exchanged. He called my son a liar. That did it. I took my jacket off and ordered Provan to follow me outside where we would sort the matter out in time-honoured fashion. I had entirely lost the plot. “Hey, that’s my son there and he doesn’t deserve to be spoken to like that!”

No blows were actually thrown that day, but the next morning I was in my office when George Douglas, the head of security, knocked on the door. Fergus had sent him, wanting to know about the altercation I’d had with Provan. I told him what happened and said that the altercation had been because of him. “That’s not what he told Fergus,” said George.

He said he would need to report to Mr McCann again. Just as he was going out the door, he said: “Wouldn’t you think that a wee apology would suffice?” I shot back at him. “Listen, George, if Davie Provan wants to apologise, that’s fine by me!” George told me he’d be back down. I never heard another word.

Many years after, I met George and he gave me the real SP. Fergus, apparently had said there wasn’t much he could do about it and that at least I had offered Provan a one on one compromise. My guess is that he didn’t fancy the running to schoolteacher bit.

But that wasn’t the last favour Fergus did me. There used to be a corridor from outside his office that bypassed the front door reception area. No one was allowed to use it apart from himself. One day, running late for a Monday morning meeting, I nipped up that way. Who should I meet but Fergus?

He looked at me in that certain way that promised I was going to get a row. Instead, he asked me if I’d bought shares in the issue. I said I had and still had them. “Hey,” he says, “those shares are worth about five times what you paid for them, It’s probably a good time to sell. A very good time.”

So I sold them. He didn’t half do me a favour. See about a day after that they were worth three bangers and a balloon. No, any time I had dealings with him, he was very fair. I have good memories of Fergus McCann. Hey, he wasn’t universally liked. People knew he had a lot of money and they wanted him to puts lots in, but that was never the template of the plan.

And what about his parting shot? When he left, someone asked him what he would miss about Glasgow and Scotland. He looked the guy straight in the guy and said: “I’m gonna miss all the free advice!” Just brilliant!