The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
New Tannadice manager Mellon in good company
It isn’t just the headline writer’s dream of a surname that has caught the imagination of Scottish football now that Dundee United have appointed Micky Mellon as their latest manager.
The puns will soon grow old (hopefully).
The biggest source of intrigue is the fact that here is a born-and-bred Scotsman whose entire footballing career, on the pitch and off it, has played out beyond the borders of his homeland.
And the biggest question is – will his undoubted managerial skills be transferable into a country and league he has never worked in before?
Mellon left as a teenager and is only now coming back to work as a 48-yearold, with 21 years of experience in the senior game behind him.
As a returning Scot, the former Tranmere Rovers boss isn’t treading new ground, though.
Let’s take a look at five homecoming heroes (or otherwise) who have taken a similar career path.
1 Bobby Moncur – Hearts manager, February 1980 to June 1981
The word legend is over-used in football but the glove certainly fits for Moncur and Newcastle United.
Last year was the 50th anniversary of the club’s Fairs Cup triumph over Ujpest Dosza and it remains the last piece of major silverware the success-starved sleeping giant has to its name.
Like many young Scots in the 1960s, the Perth man went straight to England at the start of his professional career rather than to a Scottish club. A dozen years at Newcastle were followed by two at Sunderland and then one with Carlisle United.
That he was capped 16 times in the most competitive era there has ever been for Scottish centre-backs says it all about Moncur’s stature as a player.
There was nothing to mark him out as a touchline great in the making after he hung up his boots and took charge of Carlisle for the best part of four years, but Hearts took a chance on him when they got rid of Willie Ormond near the beginning of 1980.
The Jam Tarts were actually top of the second tier at the time and Moncur finished the job off to take them back into the top flight, but he then undid the good work by following it up with a relegation.
It was a time of boardroom change at Tynecastle and Moncur has a claim to fame of being the first manager to leave in the Wallace Mercer era. A win percentage of 28 is nothing to be proud of but at least Moncur left a legacy, and one that Dundee United fans could be grateful for. Dave Bowman was introduced to the first team squad under him, as were John Robertson and Gary Mackay.
2 Graeme Souness – Rangers manager, April 1986 to April 1991
The Moncur year-and-a-bit won’t feature prominently in Hearts folklore but that’s certainly not something you could say about Graeme Souness and his half-decade at Rangers.
Not many men have had as enduring an impact on their club or the Scottish game in the last 50 years as Souness at Ibrox.
Half-empty stands and mid-table finishes were the norm when he arrived and full-houses and league domination were the recurring theme when he left.
Backed by serious money, Souness used the fact that he was steeped in English football culture rather than Scottish a pro rather than a con. His exalted status down south made selling Rangers – who could offer European football during the post-Heysel ban, it must be said – to the likes of Terry Butcher, Chris Woods and Trevor Steven much easier.
Maybe the key to it all, though, was the appointment of Walter Smith – a number two who knew the Premier League and its players inside and out (even if his well-intentioned word in the ear for Souness ended up with a case of mistaken identity and the playermanager getting sent-off at Easter Road on his debut).
3 Ian Porterfield – Aberdeen manager, November 1986 to May 1988
Maybe the Souness effect had reached Pittodrie when the Aberdeen board were presented with the task of all tasks a few months into the 1986-87 season – replacing Alex Ferguson.
They, too, went for a man who had sculpted his reputation in England.
There is a bit of cheating with this one as, unlike the other four, Porterfield played three seasons of Scottish football with Raith Rovers after the homesick Fifer decided Leeds United wasn’t for him. When he did go back, though, he made his mark, scoring the winning goal for Sunderland in the 1973 FA Cup final, to beat Leeds, ironically.
Let’s be honest, Aberdeen got it horribly wrong. It was a big job and a couple of promotions in the English lower leagues with Sheffield United didn’t represent a deep enough body of work to equip him for the task of renewing the Dons and challenging Souness.
Looking to England for his right-hand man and for many of his signings (Gary Hackett and Tom Jones anyone?) didn’t pay off and there was an inevitability to his end-of-season departure in 1988.
4 Jimmy Calderwood – Dunfermline manager, November 1999 to May 2004
You’d struggle to extract any meaningful moral of the story for Mellon to take from the three above, other than the importance of getting your backroom team right.
The new United boss could realistically look to emulate Jimmy Calderwood, however.
After decent if unspectacular careers as a player, both men did much more than serve an apprenticeship in management before they came home, Calderwood just a few years younger than Mellon is now.
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