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Danny Lennon interview


Guest TPAFKATS

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I think the main thing which wasn't discussed in the interview or the studio chat afterwards was Danny's transfer dealings and the number of players leaving by mutual consent in the following 2 windows.

I don't see much point in bashing him about 2 11th place finishes which happened before the rules were changed and 11th would go on to equal ending up in the relegation play off place. For 3 of Danny's 4 years 11th = safety. His 2nd 11th place came in the year we won the League cup and beat Aberdeen, St Johnstone, Hearts and celtic in the cups that season and finished closer in terms of points to 6th placed Dundee United than 12th placed Dundee. His first season was the one time when we seriously looked like being relegated.

In hindsight Danny Lennon had us in a group of clubs where for most of his 4 seasons at the helm we were within a few points (plus or minus depending on the year) of Kilmarnock, Partick Thistle, Inverness Caley, Ross County, Dundee, Hibs and even Aberdeen (pre-McInnes) and with a squad which fans often said was a top 6 squad but yet only Kenny McLean has gone on to finish season in a top 6 team since leaving us. In the years since leaving us Craig Samson, Gary Harkins, Dougie Imrie, Darren McGregor, John McGinn, Paul McGowan, (Hasselbaink moved to St Johnstone but hardly got a game) etc who were all touted as top 6 players have yet to play at clubs finishing there. (Goncalves should get there this season),

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Got to feel for Danny.

He's likely never going to work in football again, and I suspect he will know that.

So he's resorted to regurgitating desperate stuff that happened 3 years ago to get his name in the paper.

Nice guy, but never a football manager.

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3 minutes ago, TopCat said:

Got to feel for Danny.

He's likely never going to work in football again, and I suspect he will know that.

So he's resorted to regurgitating desperate stuff that happened 3 years ago to get his name in the paper.

Nice guy, but never a football manager.

Wish we could get a guy who was "never a football manager" who could win us the league cup. :lol:

Edited by faraway saint
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53 minutes ago, TopCat said:

Got to feel for Danny.

Nice guy, but never a football manager.

He succeeded where your pick for manager after Rae left failed.

Oh, and he managed it against a team with 11 players on the pitch.

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2 hours ago, iceblink said:

Interesting take on it from Jon McShane:

Cry me a river Danny Lennon... imagine every boy I seen him shaft came out in the press and spoke about his lies and deceit #potkettle

 

 

 

2 hours ago, buddies1877 said:

IMG_1489081313.910056.jpg

What a thouroughly dispicable, bitter bunch. 

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2 hours ago, Bud the Baker said:

Like I said on the other thread the story regards to Potter, at least, was that he'd been offered a new deal during the January transfer window but had stalled till relegation was avoided,- maybe three months, by which time IIRC he was no longer an automatic starter - if that's indeed the case then I don't feel that sorry for him. I'm not sure about Wardlaw but giving up a job as a postman to play f/t football after turning 30 would have been a big decision and obviously he feels he was due more from Lennon but being a manager has its own risks - if you dish out contracts based on sentiment then you're liable to lose your own. I suppose we tend to forget it's peoples livelihoods we're talking about and in these circumstances people tend to nurse their grievances.

As for Lennon and whether Craig/Teale/Goodwin were guilty of backstabbing It all depends on the circumstances, walking into a "dead man's shoes" is a common way to get promoted. I guess it's whether or not you've agitated to get the job behind your colleagues back which is Lennon's accusation regarding Craig.

Suppose I'm just playing devil's advocate with things - for the most part I agree with the decision to bin most of the players Lennon binned over his time with us, was just highlighting that while he feels he was stabbed on the back he wasn't exactly whiter than white on that one himself.

The only one whose reaction on Twitter surprises me is Vanzy, although I wouldn't be surprised if he's mixing it for the state of it!

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Guest TPAFKATS
Got to feel for Danny.

He's likely never going to work in football again, and I suspect he will know that.

So he's resorted to regurgitating desperate stuff that happened 3 years ago to get his name in the paper.

Nice guy, but never a football manager.


Won us a national trophy and highest league placing in decades. Mibees we should always hire guys who aren't football managers?
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1 minute ago, TPAFKATS said:


Won us a national trophy and highest league placing in decades. Mibees we should always hire guys who aren't football managers?

... with our best ever top 6 squad, full of players who have mostly never finished in the, er, top 6 since leaving St Mirren (Kenny McLean being the only real exception to that rule so far - I do expect John McGinn to also become an exception to that rule as well).

 

 

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1 minute ago, Dibbles old paperboy said:

You have a long track record of reading things in a different way from the rest of us and drawing different conclusions.

you cant have a Long Track Record.... just a Track Record, dunno how you read in a Different Way?

anyway i am off to draw some different conclusions, or cuts, or something...

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16 minutes ago, Lord Pityme said:

you cant have a Long Track Record.... just a Track Record, dunno how you read in a Different Way?

anyway i am off to draw some different conclusions, or cuts, or something...

Do feel free to share your different reading of what Danny Lennon shafting young boys in front of Jon McShane could mean.

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10 hours ago, TPAFKATS said:

 

Interview with DL in both Record

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/football/football-transfer-news/tommy-craig-knifed-back-st-9995805

 

and also The Hootsman

http://www.scotsman.com/sport/football/teams/hearts/rise-of-austin-macphee-was-resented-at-st-mirren-lennon-1-4387509

 

Interestingly he claims he was stabbed in the back by Tommy Craig who also resented McPhee's involvement.

Seems Craig was bad mouthing Lennon and McPhee to players. Makes his appointment as DL's replacement by the previous board all the more bizarre!

 

 

 

I still don't think that is the whole story and Danny Lennon is a giant among men for the way he has retained his dignity instead of retaliating.

I think that at the time he was also being undermined by some senior players to whom he stayed too loyal. (Not saying any Mair on that)

Danny was a young ambitious manager learning his trade as he was going along.

He re-invented himself having learned from what was happening around him, and as I said at the time, had we stuck with him we would have been the main beneficiaries of that steep learning curve.

We would most definitely bite anyone's hand off to be as "bad" as he had us when he left!!!

The mythical "next level" was all most fans could see... the board were more visionary... they wanted to take us in "a new direction" and oh how they achieved that!

Great interviews in which Danny retains dignity through restraint methinks.

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2 hours ago, st jock said:


...if these guys were good enough to still be playing at the top level then they would have been snapped up. Wardlaw in particular got to be a striker in the top league, thanks to Danny

indeed... where are they now?

I have a degree of sympathy for Wardlaw who maybe thought he had earned a new contract but McShane was given a chance and showed exactly how good he was... as has been proven by his career at the top level since!

Management is a bitch for sure...but one thing it is not is a popularity contest!

I have some people put in print that I am the best boss they have ever had... and a line of people waiting to dance on my grave!

Comes with the territory. The stats would tend to more than back up Danny Lennon against McShane or Wardlaw and if he had promised them the earth in an attempt to get them to better themselves before realising that their potential had already been reached then he was only doing his job in cutting them loose.

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This certainly answers quite a few questions regarding our fall from relative grace.

And how that squad that could beat Celtic and Hearts to lift the cup could end up finishing 11th (after a decent attempt to make it 12th).

There are certain clubs where managers seem to thrive (St Johnstone, ICT) and then there is the manager's graveyard of St Mirren in the final years of Gilmour.

Clearly if you give someone the manager's job you need to trust and empower them enough to choose their own assistant and build their own team.  If an Assistant is undermining the manager then we lead to the lack of discipline that saw that long list of players out the door before their contract was up.

Lack of leadership at the club & we end up going backwards.

It would have been interesting to see Lennon with McPhee as his assistant, could well have been the team to help us kick on to that next level.  Obviously Danny has decided he needs to tout himself more aggressively for a return to management and good luck to him in that.

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22 hours ago, Drew said:

No harm to Danny, but I don't have him down as sharp enough to be a sleekit, conniving back-stabber.

I met Danny a couple of times and he seemed genuine enough . I met Craig once and my first impression was that he was a bit sleekit. 

 

In the interview on the radio Danny said that when he was given the push , the Board told him that their ambitions had changed and that they wanted into the top 6 . They explained that they felt Danny was not the man to take them there , however to be then replaced with Craig just seemed ridiculous, which it was of course . They would have needed a manager of a higher calibre, which Craig wasn't obviously . However , it looks like just purely cost cutting as Danny said his budget got reduced year on year , a situation that would eventually result in a drop in standards especially if you installed an inferior manager , or a manager that had no football credibility. .

Edited by saintnextlifetime
Edited by Tom
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