God knows why flailing Ogren feels Goodwin has proved he is the man to rebuild crisis-hit United
THEY’RE calling it a ‘reset’. A chance to do things differently and learn from past mistakes. However, an owner who looks for all the world like he doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing and a manager who has lost every one of his post-split fixtures hardly comes across as the all-new, singing, dancing Dream Team ready to deliver bright new tomorrows at Dundee United.
Yet, that’s what long-suffering Arabs are looking at following the announcement last night that Mark Ogren has handed Jim Goodwin a two-year deal to remain in charge at Tannadice. The question they are perfectly entitled to ask is: Why?
Ogren’s credibility disappeared, of course, following his return to Tayside for the club AGM earlier in the season. In the details of a question-and-answer session released by the Federation of Dundee United Supporters’ Clubs on February 21, amid a stream of alarming statements, Ogren made it clear there were no plans to change manager Liam Fox or sporting director Tony Asghar.
‘The success we have had is down to Tony’s work,’ Ogren reportedly said. ‘He is my man’.
Fox was out the door five days later. Asghar followed suit shortly after. And it became ever clearer that there was really no one in proper charge of the runaway train.
Goodwin inherited the most onerous of tasks when taking over at the beginning of March in the wake of his departure from Aberdeen. The team was broken. Relegation looked a certainty. And despite three straight wins over Hibs, Motherwell and Livingston in April — which now look like some kind of mirage, relegation is what will surely come at Fir Park later today.
This prospect did not appear to trouble Ogren greatly on his ridiculous reappearance in February, stating ‘it is not the end of the world if we get relegated because we will come straight back up’.
And they probably will. They definitely should. But it is about more than that. This guy has ploughed £13million into United to end up back where he started in the Championship. He said at the AGM that he can’t afford to keep putting money in and that future budgets will be decided by how much supporters spend on season books and merchandise.
It seems fair to say that the five-year plan drawn up around wheeling and dealing in international markets and producing a conveyor belt of youth talent has failed miserably. Recruitment, in truth, has ended up a shambles, a fact highlighted by the way January’s window panned out with one loan player coming in and the well-remunerated Tony Watt being allowed to leave with no striking replacement lined up. The current wage bill is also completely unsustainable, particularly in the second tier.
So, the question is: where are the finances to put United back on the straight and narrow going to come from? And who is going to deliver the necessary nous or spark to kick off a revolution?
An owner that a large number of punters appear to want out? Or a manager who has just come through the kind of season that would traditionally ruin a career rather than see you handed a two-year deal and a remit to restructure an entire football department?
Goodwin did decent work at Alloa and St Mirren. He shouldn’t be written off as a coach quite yet. However, what exactly has he shown in recent times to merit being given this crack at rebuilding United? He simply hasn’t done anything to deserve it.
There did appear to be some signs of encouragement during those victories in April, but the facts are the facts. When the season hit the business end after the split, his team fell to bits. Their 3-0 midweek home loss to Kilmarnock was, quite frankly, a disgrace given everything at stake.
Goodwin’s failure to keep United up also comes on the back of a shambolic end to his time at Aberdeen. He did help recruit some decent players at Pittodrie. However, for whatever reason, those same players clearly made a decision to stop playing for him before his inevitable demise.
They lost 11 goals to Hearts and Hibs in Goodwin’s last two league games. They were knocked out of the
Scottish Cup by Darvel, for crying out loud. And anyone who watched that game could see clearly that the team weren’t interested any longer, that Goodwin had lost them. From a personal perspective, he has had a nightmare of a campaign. The kind of campaign from which you should slink off into the background for a bit, regroup, rethink and attempt to come back reinvented. Without wishing to be disrespectful to the Irishman, United giving him the job when relegation is a fait accompli, when there has been no meaningful ‘new manager bounce’, just reeks of a lack of imagination, a lack of ideas and a lack of ambition. And it is hard to see how Goodwin staying on will re-energise a support base that must surely be close to mutiny. Goodwin has already found himself having to deny suspicions voiced by former Tangerines boss Craig Levein, who was linked with a return in January before stating ‘the set-up wasn’t right for me’, that Asghar still has some involvement behind the scenes.
His reaction earlier in the month to Charlie Mulgrew going to a Celtic charity do in Glasgow on a Thursday night will hardly have endeared him to a section of the fanbase either. Mulgrew should never have been on a stage at the OVO Hydro for an event connected to his old club just 36 hours before a game in which survival was at stake.
For Goodwin to say that he was ‘a little bit disappointed’ by the angry reaction of some punters will have gone down like a lead balloon. It just fed into the narrative that those at the top of the club don’t quite grasp how their fans truly feel, evidenced by Ogren stating around the time of the AGM that he ‘can’t believe the doom and gloom around the club’. Talk about fiddling while Rome burns.
In truth, the best thing that could happen to Dundee United is for Ogren to cut his losses, realise he was led up the garden path in being convinced that there was serious money to be made in Scottish football and leave someone else to have a go.
However, that looks unlikely. Particularly with him going all-in on Goodwin.
The thing is, though, that steaming on with the same key figures who have sent the club plummeting out of the top-flight doesn’t feel like hitting the reset button. It feels more like continuing to hit the ‘self-destruct’ one.