SUITS YOU SIR
TV pundit McCann out to prove he’s more at home in training gear than studio threads
“But I was always confident coming in with a group of players. I was on the training ground every day for more than three years at Dunfermline coaching under Jim Jefferies.
“And people forget – or just didn’t know – I did all my licences years ago. Including my Pro. It’s funny looking back to that dissertation now, though.
“I tried to be balanced about the subject, going from taking a job when I felt I could still play, but doing it constructively and tactically so I feel I can still walk by the majority of players and still have their respect.
“And I’ve not had any players get uppity about what I’ve said because I tried to analyse rather than criticise. I didn’t want to be controversial – others boys like that, I don’t. “Andy Melvin of Sky told me on day one, same as he did with Andy Gray ‘ We can tell, son, if the ball has hit the post or gone over the bar. We want to know why. Where did it start from? How could they have stopped it?’
“You layer your explanations and I felt the coaching badges were helpful in that context.
“I’m also a believer that you don’t treat someone badly on the way up because on the way down they’ll be waiting for you.
“I’ve been there, I’ve been the guy to have those bad games.
“So I wrote that way and spoke that way because I had a feeling I may well be back in football some day – and here I am…”
Technically his reign started on April 18, his five- game Red Adair job on Dundee’s season achieved within three, before they blew a post-survival gasket in the last two.
The truth is, it starts here. The organisation, the recruitment, the sessions, the planning, the sleepless nights and 25-hour days. If it was comfort zone he wanted, he’d have stuck with his decision to say no to the job on a permanent basis.
Instead he hand-braketurned into it after a summer of working out why he should, and despite the intensity, he’s loving it.
He insisted: “I wasn’t afraid of the job. Footballers get a bad name for not being that smart but trust me, a player will see through you in a heartbeat and find the chink in the armour.
“If a group of players saw me come in and I wasn’t ready for it, they’d have sussed it immediately. ‘ We’re no’ havin’ him…’
“But I learned a lot about the team in the last few games of last season – maybe more from the Hamilton game we lost than the ones we won to stay up.
“It helped me realise what I needed to change and let me see different characters.
“I’ve listened to a couple of good things in sport about the mechanism of the mind when a job’s done, when you’re winning or if you’re chasing a game and what comes out of you.
“That game informed me of a lot, because irrespective of whether it was me taking the job or someone else, it couldn’t be al lowed to happen again. No one should be celebrating staying up. It shouldn’t get into the make up of a club that you’re happy with that.
“I listen to people successful in spor t , whether it is