When I was Newcastle United manager we signed Stephen Glass in 1998 for a fee of around £650,000 from Aberdeen.
He had a lovely left-foot on him, knew the game, and was a terrific competitor. As a person, he was as good as gold and never caused me a problem.
Stephen is now back at the Dons as manager and I wish him the very best of luck.
He has just made his first signing in Scott Brown and it certainly has the wow factor. What a brilliant piece of business.
But I have to say Scott’s departure from Celtic will be a huge loss to the club. He will be sorely missed, I’m sure.
Scott has been a brilliant servant and served the club with distinction.
When he walks into the Pittodrie dressing room he will get instant respect for what he has achieved as a player.
But he will also have to show what he is all about as a coach. In that respect, he is starting from scratch.
Much will depend on how much responsibility on the training field Scott is given on a daily basis by Stephen. It’s a tough, tough job to combine playing and coaching, but it’s not impossible.
I was player-manager at Liverpool and I was very fortunate to have a brilliant backroom staff around me.
It allowed me to be a “player” during the week at training. It was then up to me to pick the team for the game on a Saturday.
I also had the added bonus that if I wanted to miss a training session then I could – and no one could argue with me!
So, it will be interesting to see how the dynamics of the working relationship Stephen has with Scott and the other members of the backroom team.
Stephen and Scott go back to their playing days together at Hibs, 15 years ago. They clearly have kept in touch and are on the same wavelength about the game.
Aberdeen will be hoping this brave new era works out for them.
The club had very good success under Derek McInnes. But now new chairman, Dave Cormack, has gone for something different. It’s very bold but also very exciting.
This is the final few weeks for Scott at Celtic and he’ll want to go out on a high.
He would love to end his time at Parkhead with the Scottish Cup on May 22. That would be a fitting send off to lift it for the fifth season on the trot.
It would make for a box-office event if the Final was between Celtic and Aberdeen.
That would be quite something for a variety of reasons.
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