Here We Go Again

WE'VE all got one - our dream team/favoured formation against which all others are measured. I know Celtic fans who cannot see past the Lisbon Lions, Rangers fans who swear there was never a team like the Baxter-inspired side of the early sixties, while, being greedy and from Ayrshire I've got two.

Down here in Burns and God's Country - you have to have your dream junior team, in my case: Fraser, Love and Cathie, McEwan, Baird and Donnelly, Bingham, Collins, Sharp, Neil and Wilkie - the Lugar Boswell Thistle side from that wonderful 1955-56 season, when they won the league and reached the Junior Cup Final.

But, I've also got a senior benchmark team: Brown, Richmond, Watson, Beattie, Toner, Kennedy, Stewart, McInally, Kerr, Black and Muir - the Kilmarnock team of 1960. Forget the league-winning side of 1965, if they could clone Jackie McInally, Bertie Black, Matt Watson and Frank Beattie, who were common to both sides, I reckon the 1960 XI, spearheaded by the marvellous Andy Kerr, would have given the 1965 lot two goals of a start and a beating.

So given this Killie connection, you can take it I'm not best-pleased with wee Michael Johnson this morning.

To lose one good manager is unfortunate, but Jim Jefferies probably had reached his "sell-by" date at Rugby Park. Yes, he's done a great job since going back to Tynecastle, but that is his footballing "home" and probably the only place he can be happy at his work.

To lose two is coincidence, and I still reckon, if he had remembered his upbringing in management in Dutch football and gone back to basics, Tango Man Calderwood might have turned the club around.

But to lose a third with Mixu's return to Helsinki - that's downright carelessness. The big Finn was a breath of fresh air in Scottish football; sure he'd have faced problems next year, since Eremenko will certainly not still be at Rugby Park, while Bryson and Taouil also seem set to depart. But I reckon Mixu will have replaced them and kept the club going the right way. For Killie it's Tommy Burns revisited, just as Tam was never going to turn down the Celtic job, so Mixu couldn't reject his country. Sadly for Killie, in both cases the dream job came too soon.

Now, it's back to the drawing board and who knows, with the timing of Mixu's departure, Killie just might slide out of the top six over the next few weeks, unless Kenny Shiels can stick-up the "business as usual" sign in the dressing room and keep the lads focussed. Good luck to him.

Of course, my friends in the A Team of the SFWA are immediately on the case, speculating as to Mixu's long-term replacement. And, whadd ya know: same old same old as regards names in the frame.

Gus MacPherson, Yogi Hughes, Jim McIntyre, Gordon Chisholm - is that not last week's subs bench for Chick Young's Dukla Pumpherston? At least wee Durrantie's out of the picture as he prepares for life at Ibrox after his grand-father.

Speaking as a Killie fan, I'd write "none of the above" on my ballot paper, if I had a vote.

Killie don't so much need a new manager as a new approach. For generations more Ayrshiremen and women than attend Rugby Park for a normal league game have been bussed past the town en route to either of the cathedrals of bigotry in Glasgow - Killie need to get the county behind them again, re-connect with their core support and get local boys into the team (same thing goes for the other small-town Scottish clubs by the way).

Hell, they don't even train in Kilmarnock, but on the outskirts of Bears-bloody-den (how appropriate a name given Murray Park's location).

Get back to Kilmarnock, find the local talent and nurture it - that's the way ahead for Killie. And find a manager, like Mixu, who believes in football, rather than the hoofball which is so prevalent in the SPL today.

The club almost certainly cannot afford him, but, given he has to have a shot at being a manager in his own right soon, I'd go for Liverpool's assistant manager Stevie Clarke: Ayrshire boy, his big brother played for Killie, he knows his stuff and he has worked with some terrific managers.

It almost certainly will not happen, but, a man can dream.