Criticism can be avoided easily by saying nothing, doing nothing and being nothing.
That’s all perfectly well and good for the likes of Aristotle. But you don’t need to be an ancient Greek philosopher to know the same rule simply isn’t going to wash in modern day Aberdeen. So it almost defied belief that someone as notoriously thin skinned as Dave Cormack chose to lock himself away from the watching world for 48 hours, while Pittodrie was busy burning after Jim Goodwin smashed into rock bottom like a comet hitting deepest darkest Ayrshire on Monday night.
Only to emerge from the smouldering rubble yesterday evening appealing to his club’s apoplectic punters to ‘please disperse, nothing to see here.’ He may think he’s done Goodwin a turn by giving the manager a dead man’s derby at Easter Road to pull off a phoenix from the flames escape act. But if the Aberdeen chairman thinks this belated, halfway house threat will be enough to put the fire out and save himself from recriminations, then he’s likely to have another thing coming.
Without wishing to bruise any delicate egos here, it’s fair to say that Cormack is particularly prickly when it comes to having his decision making called into question. So perhaps, at this sensitive time, it might be better for him to look away now.
Because it’s hard not to rubberneck at the mess Aberdeen have got themselves into under his watch and fail to reach the conclusion that Cormack is directly responsible for most of it. And that this latest indecision is no more than conclusive proof that his fingers have been horribly burned. He may have taken an eternity to break cover since disaster struck in Darvel at the start of the week but, make no mistake, he’ll have been quietly glued to the reaction on social media ever since and what he’ll have monitored will have made a mess of his virtual Y-fronts.
Twitter is no place for people pleasers to take cover when the public is in full scale revolt outside the front door, brandishing pitchforks and torches and baying for blood. But, given his desire to be seen as a man who connects with his club’s supporters, it is hard to comprehend why he has resisted the easy option of spiking Goodwin’s head on a stick in a bid to take the heat off his own boardroom at a time of excruciating embarrassment for all concerned.
Even if Aberdeen are in better shape now than they were when Goodwin was hired to clean up Cormack’s first big managerial misstep. After all, not even Goodwin would have the brass neck to complain of being badly treated had he been shown the door given the magnitude of the humiliation his side inflicted on the club and its supporters by whimpering out of this season’s Scottish Cup to a side five tiers lower down on Scottish football’s aspirational ladder.
Goodwin has been around here long enough to know that it doesn’t get much worse. In fact, over 150 years of shocks in this very competition, it never once has.
So, deep down, the Irishman would have been expecting a tap on the shoulder from the moment the final whistle blew on Monday night. That he has been given one last chance - albeit through gritted teeth - merely adds another layer of smoke and confusion to a picture of chaos. So what if he beats Hibs this weekend?
It’s not going to repair the damage done to his own credentials nor will it do much to restore Cormack’s crumbling reputation with his own people. Exactly why he has continued to say next to nothing, do nothing and be nothing, at a moment when his self esteem is curling up between his own toes, can probably be best explained by one of two theories.
Either it’s Cormack’s pride that didn’t allow him to admit he’s made an Aristotle of running his own club. Or it’s his wallet that’s made him think twice. Because this whole vanity project is battering them both.
From the moment he officially took over the reins from Stewart Milne - having already named the club’s training centre after himself - it was only a matter of time until the club parted ways with Derek McInnes. Pittodrie was simply never going to be big enough for the both of them and Cormack - quite correctly - sensed this was a popularity contest which only had one winner.
Despite years of outstanding overachievement, McInnes’ management was becoming too stale for a support which ought to have been more careful about what it was wishing for. They had come to resent McInnes for his pragmatic approach to getting results and blamed him for failing to secure third place in the top flight table, after years of playing second fiddle to Celtic in Rangers’ absence.
So Cormack promised them a clean slate. Rather than dig deep and bankroll a fresh beginning under McInnes, he paid him up and sent him on his way.
Then he plucked Stephen Glass from obscurity and armed him with a gold plated kitchen sink. From a distance it looked like an ill-thought out, high risk strategy. Eleven months later Glass was gone, clutching onto another huge pay off on his way out of Pittodrie’s front door.
Cormack then conducted a remarkable reverse ferret. Having previously played the pied piper by expressing a desire to reinvent and reinvigorate Aberdeen as an attacking, contemporary footballing force he head hunted the manager of a St Mirren side which Goodwin had designed with little more than top flight survival in mind.
And, once again, he threw a relative fortune at this one too. St Mirren banked a fat cheque before skipper Scott Brown - the jewel in the Glass crown - had his contract paid up almost overnight, shortly after being interviewed for Goodwin’s old job in Paisley. Andy Considine was also told to leave town despite his importance to the team as well as his influence inside the dressing room, as the new man cleared the decks.
Despite all of this, the wage bill soared through the roof and Goodwin was green lighted to launch a spending spree in one summer the likes of which McInnes had not been afforded over the previous eight. It’s impossible not to wonder where Aberdeen might be today had McInnes not been left in charge of the purse strings.
Instead, Cormack’s standing has been bruised, his better judgement tarnished and his pockets turned inside out. All for one last gamble that may or may not pay off this weekend. Sometimes, the avoidance of criticism can be a costly business.
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