Fergie's Favourite Still Has Lots To Say

DEEP in the bowels of Pittodrie, Alex Ferguson would plonk his players in front of a blackboard and dole out tactical advice.

 

- Chris Dunlavy

Almost invariably, an arm would rise in protest. “Uh-oh,” the Aberdeen manager would mockingly lament. “Here we go again. It’s McGhee and his big words.”

Three decades on, Mark McGhee still doesn’t know when to keep quiet.

“I’ll always remember talking to Bill McGarry, who I played under at Newcastle,” said the Glaswegian, son of an electrical engineer and an infertility counsellor.

“I was managing Wolves at the time. He said ‘Mark, you talk too much. Tone it down a bit’. I tried to take his advice, give nothing away in media briefings. Then, somebody would say something interesting and I wasn’t able to stop myself.”

This notion of McGhee as an incorrigible conversationalist is, say those who know him, an accurate reflection of the 60year-old Scot.

Surrounded by free-thinkers like Gordon Strachan and Willie Miller at Aberdeen, he challenged the boss’s patience as regularly as his ideas.

Ferguson, who famously pursued partying Man United stars, honed those skills chasing McGhee and Co round the granite city. Later, at Newcastle, McGhee was the strike partner and drinking buddy of legendary hell-raiser Micky Quinn. And, as manager with Motherwell, McGhee wrote a newspaper column and was a regular radio pundit.

Depicted

“He’s very intelligent, very interesting, a good guy to have around,” said Strachan, a good friend who appointed McGhee his No.2 with Scotland in 2015.

Yet, for many years, McGhee was depicted as a dour careerist, a cash-chaser whose naked ambition knew no limits.