Young dreaming of full-time job and shocking Rangers
TOMORROW afternoon will be the first time Darren Young has managed against Rangers; so nothing has been left to chance.
It’s 48 hours before kick off and the East Fife manager is concerned with priorities.
“I was just getting my big-game haircut there,” the East Fife manager say. After all, he is going to be on the telly pitting his wits against the club he supported as a kid when Steven Gerrard brings the Ibrox giants to Bayview for a much-anticipated Betfred Cup tie.
While it’s another kind of scalp the 40-year-old is interested in taking, Young is a realist. His team is part-time and in the third tier of Scottish football after all. But he will shake Steven Gerrard’s hand before the game furnished with the belief that his players can make like difficult for their guests.
“We have beaten Dundee United and Hearts so that tells you what kind of team we are,” said Young who has managed Methil’s finest for two years now. We get the ball down and pass it.
“We have a few who would quite fancy getting back to full-time football and I am sure if we keep our shape and stick to the plan then we’ll cause Rangers problems. It’s going to be great; a fantastic test for the boys.
“Look, it’s Rangers and a Rangers team that happens to be playing really well, right now. They are scoring goals for fun. They have guys who, out of nothing, can run past three of our lads and put the ball in the top corner.
“I heard Gerrard saying that he was going to give some of the fringe players a game, guys who have been drawing him daggers because they’ve not been in the team. These are players with something to prove to their manager. When I heard that I thought to myself ‘oh, great’.
“If we get chances, we need to take them. It’s as simple as that but not so simple to do. We need to be careful about daft mistakes, stick to the basics, then we’ll have chances. I know that.”
Even early on in his career Young fancied being a manager. A classy central midfielder at Aberdeen and Dunfermline as a classy central midfielder, there is an argument he was underrated as a player. It is a label that has followed him into management and the hope is that a bigger club will take a chance on him.
To be fair to the Glaswegian, he’s been a qualified success in his five years in management, which began at Albion Rovers – a club which allowed him to leave after he brought tangible rewards to a team not used to anything but failure.
“We won the league with Albion and then spent two years in League One which had never happened before,” Young proudly boasts. “With East Fife, we won eight games in a row last season, that was a first, and beat Raith Rovers for the first time in more than 50 years.
“We have made records wherever we have been. I worked with Billy Stark and Sandy Clarke and gained so much experience from them. I won the league in my first season at Albion Rovers which was brilliant.
“I would like to get back to fulltime football where I spent most of my career. There has been a few discussions with clubs but nothing happened. Ach, that’s football. I like where I am. East Fife is a good club and on Sunday we will enjoy a big day for us and the supporters.” Young is smart. And honest. He knows that for all the good his team have done so far, the defeat of Hearts on penalties was a particular highlight, that Rangers are more than likely to win.
But Methil will be a culture shock for Gerrard’s team. It will be cold, windy and the artificial pitch is not the best, and the East Fife manager hopes this other side of football will help a team who have nothing to lose.
“The players deserve this,” Young said. “They have bought into what I want them to do in terms of training and the way we set-up for games.
“We beat three teams in a week to get us out of a group which nobody gave us a hope of doing anything in given who were up against.
“I just hope they don’t freeze on the day. We scored twice against Dundee United and one in the Hearts game. There are goals in this team and I have confidence that they will put themselves in the shop window.”
Young is ambitious and does have an impressive record. Sunday could work out to be the ideal job application. Rangers have been warned.
We have made records wherever we have been. I worked with Billy Stark and Sandy Clarke and gained so much experience from them