Ferguson
Treatment of my old gaffer was shameful ..why did they take so long?
DISGUSTING and sad – those are the words I’d use on the SFA treatment of Alex McLeish.
There are people inside the SFA who should be ashamed of the way they have conducted this whole affair which has concluded with his removal from Scotland.
Why on earth has McLeish been hanging out to dry for more than three weeks?
Why was he not told sooner? Why was a man of McLeish’s stature left in limbo for three weeks when it seemed everyone else knew he was going to be losing his job as national boss. Why wait that long?
It looks absolutely appalling. Given what this guy has done for his country both as a player and as a manager, the way this entire episode has been handled is totally disgusting.
Let’s put cards on the table here. Everyone knows that Alex is a guy I know really well. He’s a guy I worked under at three different places.
I played for him at Rangers, for Scotland and at Birmingham City and I have a lot of respect for him.
But I’d be saying this about any manager. No manager should be treated this way.
I just don’t understand why it took so long for things to come to a head.
They must have known what they were going to do a very long time before yesterday’s announcement.
We all know how football works and there was obviously going to be the usual stuff about how things take time and how there needed to be arrangements made for board meetings to be set up and for discussions to take place.
All garbage as far as I’m concerned. Go through the timeline.
You know deep down what you are feeling and what you are doing to do at certain stages and it was quite obvious a decision had been made in the wake of the Kazakhstan and San Marino double-header.
That double-header took place almost a month ago. The squad returned home from San Marino on a Sunday night. That was 26 days ago.
The discussions surrounding Alex staying in the job were actually going on before that, after the loss in Kazakhstan in the first game of the two.
But two days after that return flight from the game against San Marino I was reading a story in Record Sport that he was no longer the man for the job and would be relieved of his duties.
I keep using dates and times because these are the real issue here. The issue is not about the performances and some of the results.
I don’t have any qualms about a board deciding a manager is not their man any more and changing. It’s part of the game and there were strong reasons for change.
Alex managed to get through the Nations League and get the country a place in the Euro 2020 play- of f semi- finals but Kazakhstan was not good to watch. It was a disappointing performance and result in that
Given what he has done for Scotland the way this has been handled is disgusting
game and the match against San Marino which followed was not exactly sparkling either.
Alex will know these games were not good enough and the coaching staff and the players were well aware of it as well.
I ’ m not defending the performances or attacking the decision but I am attacking the way it’s been handled.
Let’s not forget, Alex was there in the moment of need for the SFA. When Gordon Strachan was fired out of the door by Stewart Regan, the first hamfisted effort was to try and get Michael O’Neill to leave Northern Ireland and they made a total botch job of that plan.
O’Neill was able to make mugs of Scotland due to their dithering. Then they failed to get Walter Smith to return.
The SFA were all over the shop, yet Big Eck was there. When they needed him he was there.
But if the way they went about appointing him wasn’t brilliant, this is through the roof. Have a bit of class about yourselves.
You are dealing with a guy who won 77 caps for his country. He was manager once before and led the team to one of the greatest results in our history when he took us to Paris and defeated France 1-0 in their own backyard when they were world champions.
How could he treated in his manner? To have a guy hanging on in this way was out of order.
Imagine being a guy of Big Alex’s stature and having to walk into functions and events with people pointing behind your back and whispering that you’re going to get sacked or folk coming up to you and asking if you are losing your job?
That would be degrading, disrespectful to a guy who has done so much for Scotland.
The fact the SFA did not come out and say something when the story broke that he was not going to be keeping his job told me everything that I needed to know.
They must have known then.
If you don’t come out and back your manager at that precise moment it means the story is 100 per cent right.
If the story is right then why do you not just go ahead and be big enough to tel l Alex straight away rather than have everyone talking about him for three weeks or more afterwards.
The fact they didn’t comes across as weak and disrespectful. In fact, it’s not weak and disrespectful. It’s sad and disgusting.