t he list of necessary skills continues to grow for the modern manager.
Amid all the financial uncertainty surrounding football at the moment, coaches must prove themselves adept at balancing finances and even learn to recognise when to curtail spending and adjust their budgets. It is no longer enough to simply set out the cones at training and bawl incomprehensibly from the sidelines.
Admittedly most managers are not frugal by nature – giving them a few thousand quid and telling them to go canny would likely result it them returning cap in hand within a week or two – but as clubs begin to scrutinise their spending, so must their managers. Jim McIntrye knows that only too well. Dunfermline Athletic have been wrestling with their accounts for most of the season and were even forced to close their north stand earlier this term in order to save up to £20,000 in costs.
Their efforts have not been helped by a potential shortfall of £80,000 – a fee which the Fife club is owed by Rangers in gate receipts. Dunfermline have all but written the amount off (it is due on Tuesday) and will now furtively look to adjust their budgets to suit. It will feel like a somewhat unnecessary pressure to place on a club which were already battling to avoid relegation, but McIntyre has not been perturbed by the situation.
"It will be good to get back concentrating on football, it's been a difficult week with various goings on," said the Dunfermline manager, whose side face Inverness Caledonian Thistle at home this afternoon. "There is no doubt the financial side of things is bigger than I thought it would be, you need to learn about the financial side of things, how things work.
"As a manager you come in and say you would like this and that, but these things all cost money and sometimes that money isn't there. You need to manage different situations differently to try to maximise what you've got.
"One thing I will say is that the board have backed me to the hilt in the window. They've been fantastic. I got more players than I thought I'd get and they're all good quality in Iain Turner, Mark Kerr, Kyle Hutton and Jordan McMillan. So I've been very lucky.
"The fans have also been brilliant and after the week we've just had we need the fans to come out and support us even more than they have done, especially with the way the finances have been. It's so important we have as many fans as possible for what is a key game. We're looking to get on with the game."
McIntyre's eagerness was novel given how poor his side have been at home this season. Dunfermline have yet to win a league match at East End Park and the need to start accumulating points has been made even more evident after Hibernian edged off the foot of the table last weekend. The Dunfermline manager is bullish about their home form, though.
"It's unthinkable we won't win at home all season," he said. "Not winning at home is poor and there is no other way of describing it and I'm not going to hide from that fact. We just need to rectify it and get that elusive win. The longer it goes on, the more people will talk about it and until we win I'll be fielding the same questions."
Inverness used to be in a similar position but now have designs on breaking into the top six. The Highland side enjoyed a run of seven matches without defeat prior to their double-header with Celtic, and Terry Butcher is eager for his squad to recover that form in Fife.
"We're in 10th position now and if we can get on a good run and get back to what we were doing before the Celtic games, which I'm confident we can do, then we'll certainly have a go [at getting to the top six," said the Inverness manager.
"Dunfermline certainly did okay last week against Rangers. They'll be fighting and scrapping like they normally do but we have got our own agenda. We're not looking down – we're looking up. We want to claw teams back to us, climb above them and give ourselves and finish off the seven games with a bang."
dunfermline athletic v INverness CT McIntyre is bullish despite failure to bank points at home
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