Reports this evening indicate that former Hearts manager George Burley is about to be offered the Scotland job.
Burley, who is currently with Southampton, was originally seen as the outsider on the SFA’s shortlist, which included Graeme Souness, Mark McGhee, Tommy Burns and Billy Davies.
However after their interview process it would appear that Burley is the man that the SFA want, and he is expected to be named as Scotland’s new manager within the next 48 hours.
The one disappointing aspect of this is that it would appear that the other candidates found out the news through the media rather than the SFA themselves. I listened to McGhee talking about it on the radio tonight, and he admitted that this was ‘disappointing’. This shouldn’t really come as a great surprise though – this is the SFA that we’re talking about after all. This sort of thing will certainly not be anything new to Tommy Burns, who found out about Alex McLeish’s appointment in the role in a similar fashion the last time that the job was up for grabs.
Is Burley a good appointment? Time will tell. He certainly could be, but managing an international side is a vastly different task from club management – it will be interesting to see how he does.
Most Hearts fans tend to hold Burley in very high esteem after the huge impact that he made during his short spell as Tynecastle manager in 2005. But they should remember that although the 13-game reign was fantastic (10 wins, 2 draws and 1 defeat), Burley did get lucky back then. It’s not often that a new group of players can click immediately like that and although the manager was deservedly praised for his role in this, I think it’s fair to say that the situation was a one-off. Hearts also rode their luck in a few of those games back then, although they do say that all successful sides and managers tend to make their own luck, whatever that means. But certainly, the potential was there for Burley to be a Hearts great, if only he’d been given the time to show what he could do over a sustained period of time.
Those days are long gone though, and if Burley does indeed take the Scotland job I’d like to wish him all the best.
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I’m pretty pleased at this I think. My concern was that other managers might easily be swayed by more lucrative job offers (e.g. McLeish – not that I grudge him his move) but I would be greatly suprised if Burley will be in line for these types of job. Much might depend on his performance in this job I suppose. As an active Scotland supporter I do wish him all the best.
The SFA are an utter disgrace. At the best it’s merely incompetence and at worst it’s downright rude. A more aptly named organisation you’d be hard pushed to find!
That is very true!
I think out of the shortlist of managers, Burley offers the most in terms of credibility, experience, motivational skills and tactical expertise. I think he’ll do well (and I’m not one of those Hearts fans who thinks the sun shines out of his aaa). Did like McGhee’s comments, even though he was obviously gutted not to be asked himself, he mentioned that should George fail to win the World Cup then he’d still be available should the SFA wish to speak to him again. 🙂
I agree with you both. He seems to be able to cmmand the right kind of repect and reaction from players. This now throws up an opportunity – will Hearts show any interest in Billy Davies, or is he not even on the radar ? Do any of you know if any interviews are underway, or even planned yet ? Its a week since Ogilvie and Lopez came back from seeing Vladimir – one would like to think that he authorised them to invite a few names to interview ? If not, its possible he sees Frail as the only viable ‘local’ option …. or he’s got some more East Europeans lined up (gggrrroooaaannn).
But Frail is not an experienced football manager with experience of British football and this is what we were promised…
imcd – actually, that was only stated as the “preferred” option. What we’ve been promised is a manager who has full control over training, tactics, team selection, discipline & transfer activity. The media have latched onto the British thing, but that’s only a good thing for a candidate to have on their CV as far as the board is concerned. It doesn’t preclude someone else from getting the job. Frail cannot be the long-term solution, because he doesn’t have the neccessary coaching badges. I think he’ll be there till the end of the season.
I think you can get dispensation from having coaching badges if you’ve applied or something like that. Gareth Southgate is in that situation I believe. Appointing Frail, even just until the end of the season, shows a lack of ambition and foresight, disrespects the fans and the club and ……………… well, it’s just a pain in the arse!
It would be frustrating if Frail continued until the end of the season, but I’d rather that than they rush into appointing someone for the sake of it now and we end up with another Rix. If getting the right man means holding on for a few months of an almost written off season anyway, then so be it. Mind you, I have my doubts if we’ll ever see a manager at Hearts whom the fans would deem to be ‘the right man’ while Romanov is still at the helm.