The Motherwell manager Jim Gannon sets out his footballing principles in an exclusive interview

Gannon scored 52 goals in almost 400 appearances across 10 years at Stockport, not bad for a centre half (or deep-lying libero, as Gannon insists he was), as the side from the Greater Manchester area climbed the divisions during the 1990s. His habit of sneaking unnoticed into goalscoring positions earned him the affection of the fans – who nicknamed him The Ghost – and as the summer of 2000 drew closer he had a lucrative testimonial match lined up and a new two-year contract in the pipeline.

A ruptured cruciate ligament sustained in a Championship encounter with Manchester City soon changed all that, though. Time heals most things but the intervening
years have done little to salve the resentment Gannon felt when he learned not only that his contract offer had been removed, but that suddenly the club were insisting on £10,000 out of his testimonial fund to pay for the hire of their Edgeley Park ground for the night.

“Regardless of what the takings were, they charged me £10,000 for using the pitch, so after 10 years’ service – coupled with the fact they had also withdrawn the contract – it didn’t sit well with me,” Gannon said. “So as soon as I was fit we came to an arrangement for me to leave. It was a bumper crowd and the fans were great on the day, they all turned up and they showed their respect, but I thought from the club at the time it was poor. It didn’t reflect well on them at all. I would never have come back as manager if the same people had been in charge.”

But back he came, after a 
productive use of his four-year absence. After a short period at Crewe, Gannon had returned to his spiritual home of Ireland, where he won a couple of Irish league titles with Shelbourne, scored against Hibernians (of Malta, not Easter Road) in Europe, and cut his managerial teeth at his first club Dundalk whilst working as a full time accountant. Stockport, on the other hand, had undone their previous good work and were back seven points adrift at the bottom of the Football League by the time a group of supporters grabbed control of the club and persuaded Gannon to return as caretaker.

Motherwell fans might not be surprised to learn of the manner in which he went about transforming the club’s fortunes. Plenty of others at the time were. “When I took over at Stockport I said I was going to try to play football and build a young team,” Gannon said. “They all said to me ‘you will do well to be 
successful with one of those 
principles, let alone both’. They thought it was tantamount to footballing suicide but I felt if we managed them properly and coached them well then it could be a success and not just for one season. Fortunately the doubters were proved wrong.” A side with an average age of 21 were promoted in the play-off final at Wembley, and before long they were knocking on the door of the Championship.

But while that route in remained blocked, the same could not be said for the club’s exit door. Despite the revenue generated by the departures of the likes of Wales international Ashley Williams, Anthony Elding and Liam 
Dickinson, still the club found itself mired in administration. Gannon could have jumped ship, too, being offered the manager’s job at 
Brighton and Hove Albion, but 
turning it down because he “wouldn’t have had a clear conscience without staying to make sure the club didn’t fall back to where it was”.

Within weeks, such 
loyalty was made to look futile. “The 
administrators made us 
redundant,” Gannon said, “for what reason only they know.”

Fast forward six months to Fir Park, and the manager’s principles remain intact. Having inherited a group, after the departures of eight or nine key figures – including manager Mark McGhee and assistant Scott Leitch – which “wasn’t very strong”, again the manager is pitching in youngsters like Shaun Hutchison, Steven Saunders, Paul Slane and Ross Forbes and doing so without sacrificing results on the park. His new-look Motherwell side lost just once in the first round of SPL games. And it wasn’t to Rangers or Celtic.

“I think people thought I was only talking the talk when I came in and said I like to play football and I like to give kids a chance and give them opportunity to grow,” Gannon said. “I think everybody was like ‘hmmm ... we’ll see’. I have had this reaction previously at clubs, because there is a fear element in the boardroom, in the changing room and in the stands because they haven’t seen it work too often. There was a headline before the Flamurtari game that said I was putting the club’s European dream in jeopardy because I was playing five kids. But in that particular game we won and we had five teenagers score. There was something I could see in those kids. Perhaps others hadn’t seen it. I think they are seeing it now.”

DESPITE being born in Southwark, London, Gannon is proud of his Irish roots. But his studies for the Uefa pro licence took him to the north-west of England. You can tell a lot about a manager from where he chooses to spend the residential part of that course, and it is entirely typical of Gannon’s functional, homespun approach that he should eschew the glamour of football on the continent to spend time learning the tricks of the trade from Dario Gradi at Crewe. What was the point of studying Barcelona or Manchester United, he calculated, when this was the level he was likely to start managing at?

“I envisaged where I would start my career and for me it was a club like Crewe, either in Ireland or in the lower divisions in England,” said Gannon. “I felt Crewe was the perfect model to study, but while I was studying a realistic model everyone else on the course was jetting out to Werder Bremen and Ajax and finding out how the beautiful game is played.”

Gannon saw enough of the game’s big guns at first hand in any case. Having the Old Firm as local rivals is easier to stomach when you consider that Stockport, who now have two of the richest clubs in the whole world as their near neighbours in the form of Manchester United and Manchester City, often had to play their games on a Friday night.

Gannon has made a fast start to life in Scotland, but he believes in evolution not revolution. His 
admiration is reserved most for those managers who, over a 
significant period of time, have made demonstrable progress. That means Gradi, former Charlton manager Alan Curbishley, and Sir Alex Ferguson.

“I remember reading a book about longevity in football and success in business and being able to grow a company from a base to a certain level,” Gannon said. “Sir Alex spent a couple of years trying to get the right formula, and tended to go for average players, but behind the scenes he went about rebuilding the youth set up and attracting the best young players. He put them in when they were ready, worked them very hard, and when they came in he didn’t just have one year of success, he had 10 years of it.”

Gannon has also adopted some other elements of the Ferguson philosophy. There was a glimpse of the outspoken, occasionally combustible nature of the man (back in 1993, he was assaulted by Luton player Mark Stein amid allegations of racist provocation) when he complained of media misinterpretation of comments made after his SPL manager of the month award for October. He has also shown he has little fear of senior players when he feels it is in the best interests of the club. Sacred cows such as Stephen Craigan, Keith Lasley and Steven Hammell have all had to endure time out of the Motherwell first team already this season.

“Senior players have a big part to play at any club, but the danger is when players are perhaps concerned with their own position and are not concerned with the club, or how it looks for them rather than the club as a whole,” Gannon said. “Sir Alex has made some difficult decisions in the past when Mark Hughes, Paul Ince, Roy Keane and David Beckham were allowed to go. He is very conscious about the culture of the club and making sure the dressing room has a strong solidarity.

“If any player was to affect that I think he would be quick to move them on. Arsene Wenger has done the same. Both managers have done the right thing at the right time by moving players on for the benefit of the group that is still there and the club.”

IT is commonplace for managers to claim upon departing a club that its ambition hadn’t matched their own, but that is a pretty fair shorthand for what has transpired towards the end of Gannon’s previous two management jobs at Dundalk and Stockport. So what exactly are his ambitions? And will Motherwell’s infrastructure be able to stretch sufficiently to meet them?

“Given the strength of the Old Firm, you would think there was a limit and a ceiling to the ambitions that you can achieve here,” he said. “It is not like a Stockport where you could move up 40 places. Here the potential probably is only three or four places higher than we were last year. To go from seventh to third would be brilliant. To break into the top two would be incredible if not impossible.

“A lot is made of splitting the Old Firm and it is probably exciting journalism, but I have said from day one that I would be very surprised if they weren’t one and two at the end of the season,” he added. “In fact, I would be very surprised if they weren’t miles ahead, double-figure points ahead of everyone else. The ambition initially was just to make sure we were competitive, and get through this period, to [build] a solid base where we have a good group of young players and make sure we support them as they grow.”

Having said that, assuming that all parties are treated fairly, Gannon will not stand in the way of any of his talented youngsters. He has been through far too much on his own career – including failing to be informed by Stockport that first division Coventry were in for him – for that. “I felt they hadn’t informed me about certain things and hadn’t respected me properly as a professional,” he said. “That is why one of my principles now is always to inform players and never to inhibit somebody’s potential to grow, because we have a responsibility to each player to make sure they grow and make the best out of themselves. If that is outwith the club, then we should respect that.”

Gannon celebrated his 41st birthday this year, and has two daughters (one aged three, one 16) from the two 10-year relationships in his life (“one is keeping me young and one is making me grow old very quickly,” he jokes). He devotes any switch-off time he might have to “Play-Doh and doing jigsaws”. No wonder everything seems to be 
falling into place so effortlessly.