The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Rab Douglas’s end-of-season awards in Number One
There may be a certain international against England still to come but on the domestic football front, last weekend marked the end of the season. So I thought it was a good time to hand out my own personal awards, although there are no prizes for guessing who my manager of the year is.
Brendan Rodgers has made an incredible impact in his first year as Celtic boss. Winning the treble was some achievement and as I have said before, he has been like a breath of fresh air for the Scottish game.
He has also breathed new life into the likes of Stuart Armstrong, Callum McGregor and James Forrest which can only be good for the national side.
Armstrong in particular has had an amazing season and what a difference in him from when Ronny Deila was in charge of Celtic.
That transformation must surely be down to Rodgers’ man-management skills.
Armstrong is looking like at least a £7 million player, tirelessly running box to box and scoring a lot of goals. He reminds me a lot of Stiliyan Petrov who I met up with again last Sunday when I took part in the Celtic Foundation charity game at Parkhead in front of a sell-out 60,000 crowd.
It was an incredible turnout and it was great to meet up with so many old friends once again on the pitch and to then have a beer or two afterwards.
My pal Neil Lennon was unfortunately ill during the game, which he put down to jet lag after flying over from Dublin on the morning of the match – nothing to do with the Guinness he had consumed on Saturday night!
However, Neil is deserving of an honourable mention in the manager of the year category along with others like Dick Campbell, Jim Duffy and even Neil McCann.
The latter of course was only in charge of Dundee on an interim basis for five games but it was mission accomplished for him by ensuring the club were safe in the Premiership.
Deep down I was not surprised when I learned he had turned down the chance to take the job on a permanent basis and has now returned to Sky Sports to work as a pundit.
I am not sure why he rejected the opportunity but one thing I am certain of is that he deserves enormous credit for what he did at Dens.
Now, no one can ever accuse him of not knowing what he is talking about when giving an opinion about management on TV.
Jack Ross has emerged as the new firm favourite to take over at Dens, although his club St Mirren are playing hard ball, insisting he is going nowhere.
Dundee cannot afford to let this situation drag on and they need a new boss in place sooner rather than later.
We used to get eight weeks off for the close season but now it is incredibly short. I was speaking to Scott Brown last weekend and he was saying that after the Scotland v England game, he will have only 11 days off before he is back for pre-season.
So Dundee need to appoint their next manager as quickly as possible to plan pre-season and deal with all the other stuff that happens at this time of the year such as bringing players in and letting others go.
Anyway, back to the awards and my Player of the Year would be Scott Sinclair.
It looked like his progress had stalled before he came to Celtic but he was a revelation and once again Rodgers deserves credit for reviving his career.
There are a lot of candidates for Young Player of the Year, like Kieran Tierney and Moussa Dembele, but personally I think the lad deserving of the accolade is Dundee’s Cammy Kerr.
He has had an outstanding season in a Dark Blues side that has struggled and hopefully he will only get better and better.