We wanted to keep Scott. He chose to stay
SAYS MARK McGHEE
FRESH from a public spat with Neil Lennon over his disputed dalliance with Hibernian, Scott McDonald probably did not need the advances of Western Sydney Wanderers for questions to be raised over his commitment to Motherwell.
The approach by the A-League club came just three weeks after the 32-year-old turned down Hibs to stay at Fir Park, a decision that had annoyed the Northern Irishman to the extent that he accused his former Celtic colleague of being economical with the truth over the matter.
If Lennon’s version of events contrasted sharply with McDonald’s insistence that Hibs’ interest was never serious, the Aussie’s former international colleague Tony Popovic — now West Sydney’s manager — appeared to believe the striker’s desire to remain in Lanarkshire was not as strong as his public utterances would suggest and tabled a deal to take the player home.
Cue a flurry of emails between Scotland and Australia with McDonald and manager Mark McGhee locked in talks until détente was reached on Wednesday night.
The outcome — McDonald agreeing to honour the one-year extension he recently signed — may not convince every cynic that he’s got his desired outcome. But McGhee is adamant he’d rather have lost the player than held onto him against his wishes.
‘It wasn’t as straightforward as us just saying no,’ he explained. ‘We reached that conclusion after discussions with Scott — we didn’t unilaterally reject it out of hand.
‘Myself and (general manager) Alan Burrows appreciated that this wasn’t just a random move — there was a possibility that Scott could take his family back home to Australia and we had to respect that because it was a life-changing decision.
‘However, we always spoke to him with a determination to keep him here if possible. Scott is very important to us in terms of how the team is able to play. He was a huge part of our performance last season and I’m still pinning a lot of hopes on him for the next year.
‘But I’m satisfied that we held the door open for him, if you like, in case it was so important for him and his family to go back. We weren’t going to be the ones to stand in his way.
‘I think that approach has kept everything right with Scott and, ultimately, he and the club came to the decision that he should stay.
‘He’s enjoying his role and he sees the opportunity here to go into the next stage of his career. And we’ve not been left with an unhappy player — he’s absolutely sound.
‘We had a great relationship with Scott, but the magnanimous way we’ve handled this affair has, if anything, improved it. After making it clear that we would let him go while stressing how much we wanted him to stay, it’s made that bond stronger.’
A scorer of 14 goals last season, McGhee’s reasons for wanting to keep the striker would have been clear in any event.
With Louis Moult due to be posted absent for around a month ahead of an operation next Tuesday, however, the Motherwell manager could scarcely afford to see his strike force wiped out overnight.
Motherwell travel to Annan tomorrow having lost their opening Betfred Cup group game to Rangers and, accordingly, have no margin for error.
‘We set out to win all four of them but now it puts more pressure on us to win the three of them,’ added McGhee. ‘These aren’t friendlies — they are competitive games and I’m not prepared to be embarrassed by going out the League Cup at this stage.
‘Scott staying gives me a lot more confidence going into these games. If we didn’t have him — young Jacob Blyth has had a stuttering start with a few injuries and missing training here and there, Louis is going in for an operation — we could have been going to Annan with no strikers.
‘It’s a relief to me that Scotty’s coming and we have a better chance of progressing in the League Cup with him here than not. That emphasises the importance of him.’
Last Saturday’s two-goal home reverse to Rangers yielded zero points but no shortage of positives for McGhee in terms of the number of chances created.
‘You look at it and wonder why that happened,’ he mused. ‘We were just two weeks into training and you see Marvin Johnson blaze one over the bar and the other chance that he took a little bit earlier than he needed to.
‘In a month’s time, he would probably have taken the ball on a little bit further and the other one he would have at least hit the target with it, but it was what it was. The good thing was that we saw very positive things that we can improve on.’
McGhee remains a fan of the new League Cup format but expressed his misgivings that the mothballing of pre-season friendlies has limited the scope to assess the true value of trialists.
‘We have a couple of players on trial and I don’t know how that’s going to work out,’ he added. ‘one of them has been here for a couple of weeks and we like him but because of the League Cup, we can’t play them.
‘I think it’s right for the integrity of the competition that clubs can’t just throw anybody in, but with the competition being so early, we haven’t been able to play trialists in any games other than the couple of friendlies we had. That’s really difficult because it’s hard to assess completely just how good they might be.’