Dunfermline Athletic is a club with great potential but recent reality has collided violently with their ambitions.
I always enjoyed covering Pars games and among the highlights was when the late Jimmy Calderwood was boss.
Back then East End Park was crackling with energy and ambition, and with Jimmy Nichol as assistant manager it also rocked with laughter.
The club seemed alive with possibilities.
It was a very successful time for the Pars and as a BBC trackside reporter I was often privileged to have a ringside seat next to the technical areas where the fire and passion from the Pars management duo always guaranteed a combustible atmosphere.
Calderwood won promotion in his first season which he followed up with their highest-ever SPL position, finishing fourth in the 2003/04 season.
He also steered them to the Scottish Cup Final in 2004, their first since 1968 (a match I attended as a mere bairn) and he took them back into European football, an arena where they’ve competed 46 times reaching the semi-final of the Cup Winners Cup in 1968/69.
Their proud record has been seriously tarnished in recent years but hope springs eternal, and I’ve always believed if someone can really fire the Pars up, the supporters will throng back in big numbers to one of the finest stadiums in Scotland.
Even languishing second bottom of the Championship, their average crowds are over 5,000.
And there are absent fans who could be lured back to watch the famous black and white stripes if the new owners can re-galvanise them.
Former professional poker player James Bord and Evan Sofer, who co-own Park Bench – the company which has taken over the club – approved Michael Tidser’s appointment as boss in January.
But they wasted little time in deciding that he wasn’t the right fit for their ambitions, pulling the plug on him after just 59 days.
The Pars identified the 35-year-old as a modern coach – one who fitted the new owners’ artificial intelligence (AI) and data-based approach to recruitment and performance.
But it’s fair to ask, did Tidser have the experience needed to make the jump from Kelty in League One to a huge club like Dunfermline?
That said the great Jock Stein was just three years older than that when he became Pars boss in 1960, when they were also deep in relegation trouble, and he won the Scottish cup a year later.
Any coach needs time to build trust and win players over to his methods and ideology, but it’s clear that things went awry quickly.
A scientific approach to recruitment and performance doesn’t necessarily equip coaches with communication and people skills, and the knack of inspiring and motivating players.
And Tidser’s remit was simply to coach, with recruitment – and there were nine players added in the last transfer window – left to those operating the data analysis system.
We now know former Hearts player John Colquhoun is advising the new owners.
It’s fair to ask whether the youthful profile of signings – and their lack of match fitness, first-team action and knowledge of the game in Scotland – was naïve in the Championship.
It is a very streetwise league where a solid core of experience is a pre–requisite.
The new owners told supporters in an open letter: “You may have heard about our backgrounds in data analytics and artificial intelligence and we are big believers in the impact this technology can have across the club.
“From player recruitment to sports science, we see huge potential to enhance our operations and gain a competitive edge.”
It’s all a million miles away from the old days of wizened scouts traversing the country on cold February nights, hoping to spot a diamond in the rough in a reserve game.
All the data in the world though is only as good as the people analysing it.
If they don’t know what they’re looking for, it will be ineffective and perhaps even damaging.
There are also two separate aspects involved: talent identification and player recruitment, which aren’t the same thing.
The science can measure the metrics of players: goals scored, assists, miles run, interceptions made and every other statistic.
It can’t measure character and temperament and whether a target will fit into the dressing room.
And the club still must recruit those players, which involves selling the club to them.
That means they have to make the area, the manager and wages, as attractive as possible.
Dunfermline need an experienced head coach/manager who buys into the owners’ plans.
Former Celtic and Hibs boss Neil Lennon is the shock front-runner for the Pars post and you can bet he’ll be aware of the need for experience on the pitch, to go with his own in the dugout.
If James Bord and Evan Sofer can leverage success, the supporters won’t bother analysing how they did it; they’ll simply enjoy a return to their rightful place in Scottish football.
But a word of caution.
I’ve seen so many new owners come in brandishing big plans and promising great transformations.
However, identifying and hiring a manager, in Tidser, when few other candidates were considered, and dismissing him after 11 games, reeks of rank amateurism.
There is no magical secret to running a successful club; if there was someone would have patented it by now.
It requires hard work, attention to detail, good people and management skills from boardroom to playing staff and a big slice of luck.
If the new owners at Dunfermline – a club now looking for its sixth permanent manager in four years – think analytics and algorithms alone will unlock the secrets to success in the football universe, when so many other clubs are adopting similar methods, they may be in for a rude awakening.
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