Accies rout helped to put Murty at ease

GRAEME MURTY has held up last season’s hiding of Hamilton Accies in the Scottish Cup as the moment he first felt totally comfortable as a manager.

Put in interim charge of Rangers for the first time following Mark Warburton’s departure in February, he attracted the ire of one supporter on social media after switching Kenny Miller for Joe Garner at half-time in the tie.

Murty made a point of taking a screen grab of the critical tweet — and was able to reflect on it with satisfaction after the English striker bagged a hat-trick in a 6-0 win.

Ahead of Accies’ return trip to Ibrox tomorrow, he recalled: ‘I do have good memories from the game against Hamilton last season because I got one of the all-time best tweets.

‘I made the decision to change from Kenny to Joe Garner at half-time, against some advice I have to say.

‘ Someone tweeted: “Miller off Garner on. Murty you haven’t got a clue”. And the abuse he got after that was epic.

‘I took a screenshot of it to say that, whether it works or it doesn’t work, sometimes you have to have the courage in your conviction and believe in yourself.

‘I have been criticised a bit for not being confident in myself and doing myself down, and I thought that was a good moment for my education.

‘I think you have to portray yourself, particularly to the first team, how you want to be perceived.

‘Not every training session is going to work, not every tactical change is going to work, but you have to be confident.

‘If anything, this has given me the understanding of how I need to be and how I need to act that will get the best out of the players here.’

That six-goal rout was Rangers’ biggest win of last season and Murty hopes it can act as a template as they seek to win a third straight game for the first time this term.

‘I was proud of what the players did that afternoon because they took what could have been a tricky game and they really owned it ,’ he recalled.

‘It is nice to go and score goals and it is nice to go and win. I actually challenged t he players against Partick Thistle (a 3-0 win at Ibrox on November 4) because I thought we could have scored more goals.

‘In that game against Hamilton that really worked. They were hungry and they wanted to put up a score and put on a show for our crowd.’

Three weeks after Pedro Caixinha was sacked, Derek McInnes remains the favourite to eventually take the reins from Murty.

But the Aberdeen manager is adamant there has been no contact from the Ibrox club.

‘ I have been pretty consistent about speculation,’ stated McInnes at his Pittodrie press conference yesterday.

‘There has been no contact from any club, which therefore means it’s speculation.

‘It’s three weeks on now, I don’t want to be sitting here answering questions all the time at every press conference I do.

‘There’s been a lot of comment and enough said and nobody from Aberdeen is going to add to that.

‘My job is the Aberdeen manager and I’m here to talk about Aberdeen.’