Scottish Premiership
The Warm-Up: JOHAN MJALLBY, DAVID MARSHALL AND STEVEN NAISMITH TALK FERGUSON’S RETURN, HIBS’ RESURGENCE AND APPLYING FOR TRIALS OUT THE PAPER
This week on The Warm-Up, Celtic hero Johan Mjällby and Hibs’ Technical Performance Director David Marshall are joined by co-pilot Steven Naismith and host Gordon Duncan.
The guys react to Rangers v Kilmarnock and the rest of the midweek action, posing the question of would Barry Ferguson see this as his opportunity for the Rangers job full time? The guys give an insight into coaching, what being a Technical Performance Director is and how David Marshall’s footballing career started in a gym-hall with benches for goals.
The full episode is available on the Warm-Up YouTube channel and can be found here.
Barry Ferguson’s Rangers audition.
Steven Naismith said: “It’s a shot to nothing. Like Neil Lennon getting the Celtic job is the exact example of it. I would also say, managing part-time is different to managing Rangers. That might have been tougher. A part-time player has their work, and their needs and desires are different to an international football who sleeps, breathes, everything is to do with performance at the top level.
It is two different things, if anything, Fergie’s got more in common with those players at the very top than the part-time ones. But for sure he’ll be sitting there thinking ‘if we can do well here I’ve got to be in with a shot of getting it full-time.’”
“It might just spark him” – Marshall on Allan McGregor
Responding to Gordon Duncan asking if he’d seen his international team-mate Allan McGregor turning to coaching, David Marshall said: “For Allan, and this is just me speaking how I see it, he would like to go in at that level. It’s an amazing opportunity, it’s very rare in life, especially in football, you have to work your way up but he’s probably earned the right for that with his career, and he knows exactly what it takes to be in there, but to go in at first-team level is an amazing opportunity, and it might just spark him into being that obsessive coach that you have to be to make it work.”
Johan on coaching and psychology
Johan Mjällby said; “Back in the day when I played, I can’t say we were stronger mentally, but we took defeats and disappointment in a different way. I didn’t speak to my loved ones or my teammates for four days more or less. When I stepped in to being an assistant manager, I thought they would be the same. These guys, they care, they still care even if they’re on their phone all the time after a defeat, but my first reaction was to get on to them and tell them, ‘This is not how you react after a defeat!’ but after a while, you calm down, you understand.
To be successful in management, of course, it’s a bit about coaching, but it’s more about being a psychologist, and really understand the minds of 25 different mentalities in the squad.”
From Parkhead gym-hall to Belgrade hero
Asked about how his career started, David Marshall explained; “I went for a trial with Celtic when I was 9, I answered an Evening Times ad in the paper. My first trial was in the school at Parkhead.”
When asked by Gordon Duncan, “Hold on, your trial was in a school?’, Marshall replied; ‘In the school, you know the bench, you turn the bench down?”
“David Marshall, Serbia and Nou Camp penalty hero, Celtic trial was against a bench in a games hall?!”
