FALKIRK: Eddie May may be a managerial novice, but he knows his club inside out and is convinced its new structure will guarantee stability. Michael Grant reports

ONCE we had all travelled to see him, Eddie May told us it wasn't about Eddie May.

Not so fast, Eddie. There were two reasons why Falkirk got a larger than usual turn-out for the unveiling of their new managerial team last week. First, to put it bluntly, there isn't much else on in football at this time of year and so the press pack descends like a plague of locusts on anything even remotely resembling a morsel of news. Secondly, there was novelty value in the confirmation of May as the SPL's newest manager. May is an unknown quantity. People wanted to find out what he was all about.

Falkirk did something unusual by promoting May to the top job from his role of head of their football academy. Cynics might suggest he is the cheap option to replace John Hughes but cost-cutting doesn't seem to be the priority given the club's willingness to implement a convoluted management structure devised by May himself. The number of jobs is dizzying, and presumably expensive. By the time they are finished, managing director George Craig will be in charge of a head coach (May), who has two assistants (Steven Pressley and Alex Smith). Craig will also have a separate head of football development in charge of a head of the football academy, a medical team, a performance manager and a recruitment manager. Got all that? They decided to hand the press a chart diagram to make sense of it.

May saw the model for all this when he visited St Etienne in France during a coaching course and met and befriended Damien Comolli, best known here for his three chequered years as director of football at Tottenham.

Comolli is currently in his second successful spell in a football director role at St Etienne. There, and now at Falkirk, the concept is that even if the head coach and his assistants are sacked, the structure and foundation of the club - its scouting, recruitment and youth development - will carry on regardless. May unwittingly exposed a flaw in the idea by taking the job of head coach. In Scotland, men who do well in academy and youth roles tend to have ambitions to rise to first team management, which disrupts the very continuity to which Falkirk aspire.

Still, it all shows May as a strategist and a man of intelligence, commitment, ideas and self-belief. "When the board spoke to me I put this in front of them and said this is what should happen.' I'm more than confident. The guy who is going to run the operations part, he should be able to recommend to the board of directors that I'm no good at my job and that's it, he sacks me!

"I'll have the confidence that anyone who comes into that job can do that and it won't be a friend of mine. I'm not interested in: I've known someone for 20 years so I'll give him a job.' It's the guy with best practice who gets the job. The only thing that should ever change at a football club, and which will change at Falkirk, is the manager and his two assistants. That way you have continuity consistently.

"I think that's a better structure than there is at 99% of football clubs where somebody new comes in and gets rid of the whole thing. He gets rid of all the players, costing the club an absolute fortune. I spoke to them the Falkirk directors, about replacing Hughes and they asked me for an interview. I was perfectly honest with them. I said I've been here for five years - that's my interview. If I'm good enough you make that decision'."

May wasn't natural or entirely comfortable in his first day in the media glare, but that can come and Pressley and Smith will provide welcome distractions. His has been a solid, unspectacular career in football but he has been consistently impressive in charge of Falkirk's under-19s and that landed him a job where his every move will be scrutinised. He noticed the change even before being formally presented as manager.

"It was a difficult decision to become manager. I've been in this job for four years, coming up for five, and if you look back at how many press interviews I have done I can count them on two hands. I'm quite a private person and this is going to be completely different for me. But it's part of the job and I'll do it. I'll treat everyone with respect and I'll do the right and proper things.

"After I was offered the job I went away with my family for a couple of days to Paris. I come back and suddenly people who I see every single day, and walk past every single day, suddenly they want to talk to me! So it's a different way of life altogether. But I've got a responsibility in how I conduct myself because that will portray the image of the football club I'm trying to project to people. I think I have decent manners and decent morals so hopefully all my players and staff will have that as well."

May - who hopes to land Andy Webster on a season-long loan from Rangers - has inherited a number of out-of-contract players from Hughes and doesn't share his predecessor's enthusiasm for some of them.

Pressley has retired, Michael Higdon has joined St Mirren, Dean Holden is at Shrewsbury while Patrick Cregg and Dani Mallo may follow Hughes to Hibs. Gerard Aafjes, Kevin McBride, Steve Lovell, Arnau Riera, Carl Finnigan and Robert Olejnik are without deals.

Hughes verbally offered new contracts to some but to May that is meaningless. "John's no longer the manager of Falkirk Football Club. He's the manager of Hibs, so we'll see if he takes them there. Any players who I want at the football club will be retained. He's different from me. I've got my opinions on players.

One or two will be retained but there's a lot who won't be. I've been very fortunate because our under-19s train alongside our first team and I see these guys. I see them every day. They act differently when the manager's there and they act differently when I'm there. I know exactly what they're about. That's what I'll make my decision on."

That was an answer which showed steely, streetwise qualities in May which would have hugely impressed the Falkirk directors who appointed him. Forget what the man himself said: it really is about Eddie May now.