LONG HAUL GAME

New Buddies boss Kearney will be given the time that departed Stubbs was not

ST MIRREN chief Gordon Scott has promised Oran Kearney will be given the time Alan Stubbs was not – even if they are relegated.

The Buddies chairman bulleted Stubbs just three months into the job amid reports that he had lost the dressing room.

Looking back, Scott is still baffled how it went so badly for Stubbs (right) and insists it seemed right at the time to give the gig to Hibs’ Scottish Cupwinning boss, just ahead of former

Coleraine boss Kearney.

Now the club has gone back to the

Northern Irishman to ask him to pick up the pieces and Scott has vowed there will be no more knee-jerk reactions if Kearney doesn’t get off to a flyer – or if they go down.

He said: “I would still expect us to stay in the league but even if we don’t that won’t change things.

“Jack Ross lost his first six games and we were still so many points behind the rest in February but we knew he was the guy to stick with.

“Similarly, we now see Oran as the future of this club. He was so close to being our man in the summer that it was a no-brainer this time.

“If we had brought Oran in during the summer and it hadn’t worked out then we’d have been wondering, three months down the line why we hadn’t gone with Alan. He had the great CV, perfect references. Everyone told us Alan would be a great appointment and the fans seemed happy with him too. So it would have been very hard to explain why we hadn’t given Alan the job, whereas Oran seemed like a risk. I don’t feel it’s as big a risk now.

“I’ve no idea what went wrong with Alan. He came across well at the interview and had no issues with the budget he had to work with.

“In fact, he referred to his time at Hibs, where he had brought players in on similar wages to what we offered. Everything he said seemed right to us at the time.

“He wanted to build his own team, part of the problem was maybe that he should have stuck with the core of the promotion-winning team and then added to it rather than just knocking everything away to start afresh.

“But you can see already that Oran’s lifted the dressing room. His first day was really good and we could see the camaraderie was still there.” To aid the rebuild, Scott is looking into appointing a sporting director. He said: “If we have someone in full-time, working with the manager to identify players further ahead then that should help.”