Wayne: It was so Rood of United to ditch Van Gaal after FA Cup win
“He was the son of my best pal John Ritchie, God rest his soul, who passed away last year.”
Campbell insists the pressure will be huge on McCall’s men as they deal with the bizarre circumstances that have sent them down.
He said: “It still seems hard to believe that Partick are getting relegated but the same goes for
Hearts and Stranraer. I suppose it’s unique circumstances.
“I maintain that if Hamilton Accies had f inished bottom of the Premiership and Alloa Athletic last in the Championship then there wouldn’t have been an argument.
“Thistle don’t have a divine right to be in the league but they’ve been unlucky because they had a game in hand.
“I suppose it’s hard to say what the alternative option is.
“There will be pressure on the players and staff and Ian must win League One or he’ll be in trouble and he’ll know it.
“It’s hard for big clubs to adjust when they’re relegated – Dundee United are an example of that after only getting out the Championship at the fourth attempt this season.
“People talk about clubs being too big for certain divisions but I’m reading Sir Matt Busby’s book and Manchester City were relegated
“And his budget will be greatly reduced. Ours was so we signed what you would describe as journeymen such as Mark Roberts.
“It will be sad to see Partick Thistle in League One and it’s not really anybody’s fault – although they are to blame for the fact they are bottom of the league right now.
“Thistle have such a great history. Jimmy Bone’s a legend at Firhill. He was my best man and my assistant at Thistle.
“It was a massive job and we just went down that first season but what came through clearly was how friendly a club they were.”
Wa y n e R o o n e y reckons Manchester United made a huge mistake sacking Louis van Gaal.
The Red Devils legend has hailed the Dutchman as the best manager he has ever worked with in a new book about Van Gaal’s career.
And Rooney claims the decision to axe the manager less than 24 hours after winning the FA Cup in May 2016 was a massive blunder.
Rooney said: “I was devastated when Louis was sacked. It was an absolute joy to work with him.
“We should have kept him for a third season. We would have been so much stronger.
“I felt things were improving and players started to understand his vision. In those two years I learnt more than under any other manager.
“This is why I will be forever grateful to him.
“Not just for making me captain but also for all the trust and belief he had in me.
“We didn’t have the best team in the league anyway but we could not afford to have 12 players injured.
“Our f i rst XI was good enough to be in the top four but once we got injuries we got in trouble because we did not have the same quality in the squad as in the years before.
“That process at the time was good for me because I had decided that I wanted to become a manager.
“And working with Louis in that way was priceless in my opinion because I could learn so much of him.
“I could not have wished for a better example.”
Both Rooney and Van Gaal have given candid accounts of the time they spent working together at Old Trafford in the book ‘ LVG – The Manager and the Total Person’, which has just been published in Holland.
Rooney, 34, is now a player-coach at Derby as he builds towards his ambition of following Van Gaal into management.
The Dutchman reveals how he made the striker his captain when he arrived in Manchester in 2014 in a bid to improve Rooney’s wild behaviour off the pitch. He now admits the ploy didn’t work, although he did manage to laugh when a video was posted on social media of his skipper being knocked out during a drunken sparring session with Phil Bardsley.
Van Gaal said: “I could not fault Rooney’s professional attitude on the field for one second.
“But the way he lived his life off it was a totally different story.
“So I made Wayne captain to try to get more control of him away from football. Unfortunately, we did not quite succeed.”
Rooney knew what Van Gaal ’s motives were for handing him the responsibility of leading the team. And he was shocked by the DDutchman’s response to sseeing Bardsley land a kknock-out blow.
Rooney said: “Look, ssometimes I want to get aaway from football.
“If we have a few days ooff, I like to go to a mate’s hhouse and we drink and pput boxing gloves on.
“But when that clip wwent viral I thought ‘JJesus, I’d better tell the mmanager.’
“But when I walked ininto the manager’s office aas soon as he saw me, he bburst out laughing.
“It was totally not a problem for him.
“The media made it much bigger but Louis just laughed.”
“After pre- season, where he had tried a couple of players as captain, Louis phoned me up.
“He had chosen me as his new captain. I really wanted it at the time anyway, as I had been with the club for so long, so it was absolutely great.
“Louis said to me that on the pitch I was a top-class professional but he wanted me to be that same professional off the pitch.
“I could see why. I had been up to a few things in the past off the pitch.
“I did not find it difficult to behave in a responsible way at the club, away from the club it was different.
“I suddenly had a lot on my plate as a captain. There were all different roles and I had to keep a certain image as skipper towards my United team-mates.”