PARTICK’S AYR RAID TO CAPTURE McCALL IS A MASTER STROKE

I HAD the privilege of playing at Firhill last weekend in Kris Doolan’s testimonial. He’s an absolute gentleman on and off the pitch and a real role model to kids. But, despite scoring over 100 goals for Thistle during a ten-year stint at the club, his career in professional football almost never happened. Doolan’s big break came thanks to Ian McCall taking a punt on him in 2009 while he was playing in the Juniors with Auchinleck Talbot. During that same summer, McCall also signed another player from the Juniors, Kilbirnie Ladeside’s Chris Erskine, and he went on to become a Thistle legend. What we can say beyond all doubt, then, is that McCall certainly has an eye for a player. Doolan linked up with his old boss once again when he joined Ayr United in the summer. But it looks to have been a brief reunion. Having dispensed with the services of Gary Caldwell, Thistle are set to appoint McCall as their new manager. They say you should never go back to a former club, but McCall is the perfect fit for what Thistle need right now. He has proven himself to be an outstanding manager at Ayr over the past few seasons, taking them out of League One and establishing them in the Championship on a very limited budget. They’re going great guns once again this season — and it’s all the more impressive after losing their talismanic striker Lawrence Shankland in the summer. Over the past couple of years, I’ve done a lot of punditry work with McCall on

BBC Sportsound and I’ve got to know him quite well. He enjoyed life at Ayr and has shown them loyalty in the past by snubbing interest from the likes of Falkirk and Dundee United. His decision to leave Somerset Park and head back to Firhill, where he was in charge from 2007-2011, won’t be one he has taken lightly. It’s a coup for Thistle to get him, given they’re bottom of the Championship. But it’s no surprise they wanted him. He ticks every box.