Tommy Craig: A career backroom man whose qualities were not transferable to front-line management

When he was appointed by St Mirren in May there was the oddity of him being the oldest manager in the SPFL Premiership and the least experienced as a club manager in his own right. All his decades in football - as a player he was great, as a coach and assistant manager he was a great survivor - had included only half-a-year in charge of a club. He did not impress at the Belgian outfit Charleroi in 2010 and was quickly dismissed, and he did not impress at St Mirren and was again given the chop today. He joined both those clubs as assistant manager and twice stepped into the shoes of the man who appointed him. But not for long.

His end in Paisley was less surprising, and far better received, than his beginning. The appointment of Craig was a strange and desperate throw of the dice by St Mirren in the summer: a cheap option and a move bereft of imagination given that he had been the assistant to a manager who had himself been given the sack. It was madness to conclude that a Danny Lennon/Tommy Craig combination which had stopped working could be mended by removing one and keeping the other.

If Lennon was not good enough for them what were the chances that his No.2 would be any better? The answer to that emerged long before the last of his 19 games in charge, the home defeat to St Johnstone at the weekend.

St Mirren lost 12 of those 19 games under Craig. Pitifully there were only three wins. They are the only senior club in Britain to have not recorded a clean sheet this season. In those 19 games they managed only 13 goals. Results and performances had actually deteriorated recently: six defeats and two draws in the last eight, one goal scored in the last six.

There were mitigating factors. He inherited a poor, struggling squad at a club lacking morale. The bulk of the 2013 League Cup-winning team had gone and the feelgood factor had bled away. Darren McGregor, an important defender, left in the summer and Steven Thompson, the invaluable striker, was soon injured and lost for 12 consecutive games. Kenny McLean stood out in an otherwise mediocre group. Without Thompson's scoring and presence a sense of hopelessness crept in as game after game ticked by without a goal.

There was a modest budget for Craig to do anything about it. He blamed injuries and began publicly pining for Thompson's return. But there was no enthusiasm for his own appointment and no lift from it. Players were used in one position, then another, then another. The constant tinkering made no discernible difference. Craig talked of the problems - defending, scoring (problems don't come much bigger than that) - while showing himself powerless to rectify them.

If Craig privately dealt with his players as he publicly dealt with the media it was no wonder his prospects dropped like a stone. He has always come across as an odd, awkward presence in front of cameras and microphones and he lacked Lennon's occasional quirky charm and his willingness to thank and empathise with supporters. By the end Craig sometimes dealt with questions about his own future by blanking the interviewer entirely, the dead air lingering as a mortifying confirmation that his understanding of the media belonged in the dark ages.

His exposure to supporters was deeply unimpressive. No-one gets the heave for giving bad press conferences, though. Craig's unpopularity in the press box did not matter but he could not win over enough of those in St Mirren's dressing room, directors' box and home stands. Attendances had dropped and supporters grew disillusioned with a managerial reign which gave them nothing.

The chairman Stewart Gilmour has always been patient when managers have hit hard times. Gus MacPherson was in charge for seven years and Lennon four. No-one could say he acted with undue haste on Craig. Others were quicker to turn and attitudes hardened after the joyless 3-0 defeat at Hamilton on November 22.

St Mirren's Premiership position is vulnerable and making a change of manager now has given them time and a January transfer window to make emergency repairs. Support for this St Mirren board had always been quite solid among supporters but the appointment of Craig, and the perceived procrastination in acknowledging that rectifying it, eroded some of that goodwill. The board's challenge now is to find someone more appropriate for the job while having about the same amount of money now as they had in the summer, ie not much.

The great survivor did not survive today. Craig does receive praise from some in football for the quality of his training ground work and it has been as an assistant manager or coach, having worked in those roles for Hibernian (twice), Celtic, Aberdeen, Newcastle United, Charleroi and St Mirren (with a spell as Scotland's under-21 manager), that he has secured regular employment. An extensive network of contacts will surely allow him to resurface in another backroom role somewhere or other if he feels he has more to offer the game.

It would seem inconceivable that any club would give him another chance as manager. His time in charge of St Mirren is over, and it will be remembered without affection.