Derek McInnes has revealed that Geoff Brown had decided he would be Owen Coyle’s replacement as St Johnstone manager BEFORE he even knew if he actually wanted the job.
McInnes was just 36 when he became player/boss at McDiarmid Park, following his predecessor’s decision to move to Burnley in November, 2007.
The now Kilmarnock manager revealed in an interview with PLZ Soccer that he was summoned to a meeting with Brown, which he thought was to inform him who the new head coach would be.
McInnes heard on his car radio during the journey to Perth that the identity of the new man at the helm would be announced to the media the following day.
But he didn’t have a clue that new man would in fact be him.
“I was surprised to be offered the job of player/manager,” said McInnes, who guided Killie into Europe last season.
“I wasn’t expecting it when Coyley left to go to Burnley.
“Geoff Brown had asked me for a chat at McDiarmid on the Monday after we won the Challenge Cup at Dens and it was a wee bit of a shock.
“On the way up, the 7 o’clock news came on just as I was getting to the Broxden roundabout.
“It was local news saying: ‘St Johnstone are set to unveil their new manager tomorrow’.
“So I thought Geoff was going to fill me in as captain: ‘This is who the new manager is going to be’.
“He was offering me the job and had already announced that he was unveiling his new manager.
“He’d just assumed I was taking it!
“He said: ‘I’ve been watching you from a distance, you’re more than ready, I trust you’.
“It was a huge surprise because I was still playing.
“I was going through my badges but it still wasn’t something I was thinking about to be honest.”
McInnes felt dropping himself from the first team was a crucial early move.
“I only picked myself once,” he said. “I took myself out of being a player.
“The club needed me to be better as a manager than a player and I needed my focus.
“The players needed to see me as the manager not just Del picking the team.
“I felt that giving up playing was going to be a big step towards that.”
Hard conversations
Choosing to hang up his boots was far easier than telling former team-mates they weren’t part of his plans.
“There were tough decisions at the end of the season,” McInnes said.
“I knew what I wanted – more pace at the back so we could play a high line. And I wanted us to play with wingers.
“Unfortunately, as a consequence of that I had to let pals go – boys who I’d travelled with in the car and knew their families.
“I spoke to Walter (Smith) about it.
“He said: ‘If you can do those ones early on, letting your mates go, every other one will be easier after that. If it feels 100% right you’ve got to do it’.
“We won the league in my first full season and every decision was about using the money that I had.”
Brown, who is on the verge of selling Saints to American lawyer Adam Webb, was the perfect mentor for a rookie manager, according to McInnes.
“Geoff Brown and Stewart Duff moulded me, shaped me and helped me become not just a manager on the training side but they brought me into the inner sanctum and guided me,” he said.
“I’ve got so much to thank them for.
“We had a board but the board meeting was him taking me to the Glover Arms up the road.
“‘McInnes, you’re taking me for lunch’”, Geoff would say.
“We’d sit for three or four hours, chewing the fat. Everything was a ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
“It was a great apprenticeship.”
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