CRAZY GANG
Del: It’s nuts Archie got boot after top-six spot but I’m so glad he’s on my team at Killie
DEREK McINNES reckons it was crazy that Alan Archibald lost his job so soon after taking Partick Thistle into the Premiership top six.
And he has hailed the former manager and other key supportteam members Paul Sheerin and Craig Clark for helping Kilmarnock complete their own surge into the top half and race towards Europe.
McInnes has led superbly from the front as Killie have secured their top-six finish two games before the split. He’s been ably backed by a crucial trio of staff in assistant Sheerin, first-team coach Archibald and technical coach Craig Clark.
He reshaped the set-up after Tony Docherty’s departure to Dundee at the end of last season and said: “There’s been a good way of working and dynamic with all the backroom staff.
“We changed it up in the summer, Paul went from first team coach to assistant manager, he’s always been a member of my staff. I made him reserve manager at St Johnstone when I was there, I brought him to Aberdeen and I’ve brought him here.
“He’s got a good manner about him, he’s been a manager before and he thinks like a manager.
“Archie got Partick Thistle into the top six and then lost his job within a year, which was crazy really.
“I always thought he was a good manager and, more importantly, a good person, somebody I always spoke to often enough after being a team-mate at Dundee United. I always had a feeling he’d be part of my staff if he wasn’t a manager and it was just about timing.
“Archie was a youth coach at Motherwell and I just thought he was better than that role, not to decry the role because Motherwell were good enough to give him an opportunity.
“But I just wanted him working with me at first-team level. When the opportunity arose, I moved quickly. He was my first phone call.
“Craig, who we’ve promoted from the Under-18s, has a great work ethic, desperate to learn, desperate to offer anything he can, he’s been a brilliant member of staff in terms of analysing opponents, good on the training pitch.
“Him and Chris Burke swapped roles. I felt Burkey needed to be manager of his own team, so he’s gone into the Under-18s role and they’re top of the league and doing brilliantly at the minute.
“I liked Craig with the 18s, I thought he’d loads to offer but I felt he needed to be part of the team, to learn at senior level.
“He’s maybe not had the football career the others have had, but he’s had a good coaching career and I feel Burkey’s got so many attributes to be a great member of staff and maybe one day he can be a manager in his own right. “Everybody has a role to play and everybody chips in, but within that, I feel we’re really fortunate at Kilmarnock to have a really strong staff. “Anytime a team has a season that’s better than a lot of people have expected, there are a lot of things go right with that. It’s boardroom level, your backroom staff, your coaching staff and your players most importantly.”