Graham Spiers

ALEX RAE has spent various spells out of football since hanging up his boots in 2008 – but he always pined to return. Prior to being appointed the manager of St Mirren last month, Rae had done a tour of duty as assistant to Alex McLeish at Genk, with six months either side of that job on the outside looking in.

EVERY day, says Rabin Omar, he feels grateful for what he has: family, friends, a great life in Scotland. But it might all have been so different for Annan Athletic’s young Kurdish striker, who is now a football hero in Scotland, had his family not fled the terror of Saddam Hussein more than 20 years ago.

GARY LOCKE has known the full wrath of it. Recently a Kilmarnock supporter, feeling that he had plenty to be irate about, bawled from the main stand: ‘For God’s sake, Locke, get yer hauns oot yer pockets!’

Chick Young still has the Hornby train set that his father, Harry, got him for Christmas when he was five years old, just months before Harry Young dropped dead from a fatal heart-attack.

“It’s funny because I was a Conservative by the time I was 16,” says Bill McMurdo, while relaying to me his remarkable story from the East Lothian coalmines to junketing the world as agent to George Best and others. “Around the pits it was a different world back then."

Not everyone has a favourite Alex Miller football memory – but I do. It is from the afternoon of Saturday August 8, 1980, with two minutes to go at Celtic Park, with the Old Firm locked at 1-1.

The new chief executive had to calm everyone’s nerves, and then find a new football manager. As baptisms of fire go, it was quite a challenge.

Stephen Thompson remains one of the voodoo dolls of Scottish football. All over the place they are sticking pins in the Dundee United chairman – and that’s not just among his own Tayside faithful. Thompson’s lippy style and sometimes brusque approach is not to everyone’s liking, and the invective around him has only increased since United went into a tailspin 10 months ago.

The manager of high-flying Ayr United lays his cards on the table in terms of what it all means to him right now. “It has been a kind of rehabilitation for me, in my career and in my life,” says Ian McCall. “I really want it to work. I want to make my players a success. I want to make this club a success. I wanted to prove to myself – and no-one else – that I could still do it.”

“Get f*****g Shankland on!” a St Mirren fan hollered angrily at Ian Murray on Sunday afternoon as his team fought desperately – and admirably – to get on level terms with Rangers. The sharp language must have been familiar to Murray, a man not short on incoming advice in recent months.