interview St Johnstone chairman knows the secret to appointing managers, writes Richard Wilson

Even now, separated by circumstances, Owen Coyle and Derek McInnes still speak to each other by phone most days. Their friendship stretches back beyond the time they started working together at St Johnstone six years ago, when Coyle was the manager and McInnes the player-coach, but there is a sense, too, that they share a future: Coyle has already made it to the Barclay’s Premier League, while McInnes is considered promising enough to join him in England’s top flight.

The St Johnstone manager has been linked with vacancies at several clubs during the last two years, most recently Burnley and West Bromwich Albion. He becomes irked by the assumption that he will soon follow in his former manager’s footsteps (Coyle left for Burnley in 2007 and is now in charge of Bolton Wanderers), but there is a symmetry to their careers.

Both have taken St Johnstone to two cup semi-finals, both built effective teams from limited resources at McDiarmid Park. Both are well liked and respected in the game, and both are facing national cup semi-finals this weekend. When St Johnstone face Motherwell at Hampden today, it will be their fifth semi-final in five years, yet they have never made it into a final. For Bolton, who play Stoke in the FA Cup semi-final tomorrow, the opportunity is more of a novelty, but the progress of the two teams is considered a reflection of the worth of their respective managers.

They are different, in nature, in approach, in style, with Coyle more exuberant and open, McInnes more contemplative. Coyle, too, is at his most effective in persuading players of their value, working to inspire with his zeal, whereas McInnes is more measured, perhaps even more calculating.

“One way or another, Owen’s going to convince whoever he has round about him that they’re good and they can do this and that; he’s a natural motivator,” says Geoff Brown, the St Johnstone chairman. “McInnes is a different type of guy, he leads from the front, he knows what he wants to achieve and the squad knows exactly what he expects of them. They’re two entirely different managers, but life would not be life if you didn’t have that.”

Brown appointed both men – they are among the nine managers he has employed at McDiarmid Park – and he once declared McInnes the best of the managers he has worked with. There is a sense of depth to McInnes, a kind of authority. Coyle’s attributes, his optimism and his sharpness, run closer to the surface. Talking about his own relationships with them, Brown remarks that “with Owen I used to get three phone calls an hour”, while “with Del, it’s maybe two or three a week”.

He recalls, too, inviting Coyle to an interview for the manager’s job at St Johnstone and him turning up having “done an A to Z on every player. He talked his way into persuading us that he would be a good appointment”. If the essential traits of Coyle could be summed up, they would be his commitment and his enthusiasm.

McInnes shares the former, and he leaves his house in Renfrewshire at 6.15am every morning to drive to Perth. Having taken the first of his coaching licences when he was 21, and scouted St Johnstone’s opponents when he was player-coach, before working with the reserves, management has always been a natural progression for him.

There was some dissension among St Johnstone fans when Brown appointed McInnes as Coyle’s successor. It was an act of instinctive judgement – he talks of the chemistry that must exist between chairman and manager – and McInnes took the team out of the First Division as well as establishing a club record run of unbeaten matches. He is meticulous, and the squad has recently been shown video footage of 70 chances they have created: the team has not been scoring and he wants to chase away any doubts that this drought cannot be overcome.

Coyle is often lauded for attempting to impose a sense of style on his team, although Bolton can revert to bluntly effective tactics, but McInnes’ sides have been capable of self-expression, too. For now, though, their strengths are in their organisation and assiduousness. “It’s horses for courses,” says Brown. “Everyone has their own ideas of how they should play, but it’s [down to] the players you have. Derek is very flexible in his approach. He has the main ingredients for the defence to stand strong and for us to play through the midfield. You can rest assured that the manager will make the best of what he’s got.”

So does Coyle, and this weekend belongs, at least in Brown’s mind, to the two men who’s managerial careers he started.