Iain McInnes: Recruiting the right manager is about luck, not planning - how Glen Little and a bottle of Peroni brought ex-Wigan and Ipswich boss to Portsmouth

Within an hour of dismissing Shaun Gale as Gosport Borough boss – and despite a club statement pending – interested parties were already tabling their CVs.

Having ploughed £600,000 into the Privett Park club since December 2017, the 72-year-old is seeking a fifth manager as the promotion challenge he craves continues to elude.

McInnes, of course, oversaw the appointment of Paul Cook as Pompey boss while chairman during four years of fan ownership.

Winning ratios, however, aren’t kind, with the ex-Chesterfield man representing fourth time lucky for those occupying the Fratton Park boardroom at the time.

McInnes admits the pivotal recruitment of Cook relied on ‘luck’ rather than strategy – now he’s hunting for the ideal candidate to rescue relegation-threatened Gosport.

‘Football’s a difficult place to be. They call it the beautiful game, but it’s a very ugly business. Horrible,’ he told The News.

‘I was at the ground for a couple of hours after letting Shaun go and in that time had three phone calls interested in the job. Later two agencies contacted me saying “Have I got the man for you”.

‘My wife has been poorly and, the following day, I was with her when my phone rang. I didn't recognise the number so bleeped it off, thinking I’d get back to it if I wanted to.

‘It then rang again, so I bleeped it off once more – then I received a message from that number saying “Rude man”.

‘My texted response was “Whoever this message is, perhaps it would pay to think first. I am at the hospital with my wife. Who’s rude now?”.

‘He came back with “Mr McInnes, hope you are well”. This was actually somebody who wanted to talk to me about the Gosport manager’s job.

‘I could have named the people I got phone calls from before it even happened, they are there in abundance.

‘The problem with football and football people is, whether you like it or not, you’re always inextricably dragged towards that revolving door, even if you don’t want to go there.

‘I promised myself I didn’t come here to fire managers, I actually probably let the thing run on too long. What I’ve got to do now is sit down and say to myself, even at my age, “What can you do in selection that’s better?”.

‘Sacking people can’t always be the answer. In my business, 25 per cent of the people have gold watches and another 40 per cent have been there 15 years – and I don’t chain them to the wall.

‘So then you think why can’t that work in football? It’s because you don’t actually get to know about what’s going on until it’s too late.

‘With Shaun, I was trying to be loyal. Considering some of the bizarre injuries we had, I believed we had to give it time to settle down. The problem then is how long do you give it – is it getting better or actually is it getting worse?

‘It got to a point, probably about three weeks before he left, where I thought it’s not getting better. Despite all the reasons for being where we are. I had to do something about it.

‘I probably agonised over Shaun for a week. It was a horrible thing to do, he did a lot of work behind the scenes because he’s that kind of guy, he put effort in, and you are dealing with a person.

‘But I told the players on that Tuesday night that, while I may have dismissed him, they actually got him the sack. They could have been better.’

Amid the lottery of appointing managers, McInnes can rightly table Paul Cook as an occasion when he hit the jackpot, albeit as Pompey chairman.

During the opening two years of fan ownership, Guy Whittingham lasted seven months, Richie Barker had 20 games, while Andy Awford kept the Blues in the Football League as caretaker, then led them to the lowest position in the club’s history as permanent boss.

Then, in May 2015, Pompey’s board paid £150,000 in compensation to secure the services of Cook from Chesterfield, while increasing the playing budget.

Having lost against Plymouth in the League Two play-offs in the Scouser’s maiden season, the Blues captured the title in 2016-17 to earn a League One return.

McInnes added: ‘I don’t think there’s a formula for picking the right manager. If there was a strategy with Cookie, it was probably the ability to spot somebody who seemed to fit Pompey.

‘I remember going to Chesterfield in March 2014 when we were having a really bad time under Richie Barker and, on the way in, I bumped into former Pompey player Glen Little.

‘Obviously we talked about AC Milan and he said “I’m a big mate of Chesterfield’s manager Paul Cook. After the game I’m meeting him for a beer, you must come in, you’ll love him”.

‘Well, following a goalless draw, we sat in his office for a good couple of hours before the drive home. Paul was very complimentary about us and the character of him came out.

‘From that minute onwards, I felt I had met a Pompey manager. At the time, not necessarily the next one, but the right person. That was just luck.

‘When it came to interviewing him for our job a year later, the first meeting was at Wentworth Golf Club, he always picked good places to meet, only for him to walk out before I actually arrived!

‘He initially had a conversation there with two other people from the club, who shall remain nameless, and they had annoyed him with what he considered an insulting (salary) offer.

‘My wife was there before me and, when I turned up, she said to me “You’re going to have to do something about this, he’s furious”.

‘So I approached him and said “Come on Paul, we’ll get stuck into a Peroni”. And we got him as our manager.

‘The only appointment at Pompey which we made strategically was Richie Barker assisted by Steve Coppell, because it split the board in half. We interviewed people from all over the place, more than once, and ended up with a short-list of about four, which we all met.

‘Cookie and I had a unique relationship, very old-fashioned, we liked each other, we respected each other, we argued like cat and dog sometimes, but I just felt he was the right man.

‘I’m a Pompey man through-and-through and used to tell him that I’ll always be emotional, outspoken, will probably say some stupid stuff during the game, because that’s how I deal with the pressure.

‘It’s my football club, a matter of life and death to me, so you’re never going to be analytical.

‘I’m a lot more analytical at Gosport. Although I’ve become very fond of this club, it’s probably the same way as you become fond of an in-law. Part of the family, but not quite the blood relationship.’

Gosport’s season has imploded following a promising start which saw them basking in seventh entering September.

Since then they have lost 12 of their last 15 matches in all competitions, leaving them languishing 18th in Southern League Premier Division South.

The dreadful run includes being dumped out of the FA Cup’s second qualifying round by Paulton Rovers and eliminated in the FA Trophy by Bristol Manor Farm.

Having inherited Alex Pike as manager following his December 2017 takeover, McInnes has appointed Ryan Northmore, Craig McAllister, Lee Molyneux and, of course, Gale.

Now the hunt is on for the next Privett Park boss – with the owner conceding Borough are locked in a relegation battle.

He added: ‘When looking for a manager, you can’t panic because that’s the worst thing in the world.

‘I think I’m 25 but I’m not, I have been here for five years, which is a long time, and have got to say to myself what fits this football club best?

‘I was hoping this season would go a lot better and, if I am honest, it should have done. I increased the budget and now we’re in a relegation fight, I can’t believe I’m saying it, of course we are.

‘We are actually bottom of the league on form and, if you also include cup games, are a third of the way into the season. I think by now you know your direction of travel.

‘Our playing budget is more than enough and we have lost to sides this season who have a budget at 50 per cent of what we’ve got and still do okay.

‘Hartley Wintney, Winchester City, North Leigh, Metropolitan Police, you will be talking in the multiple hundreds – not multiple thousands – for their weekly budget.

‘We increased our budget this summer thinking we would be in the play-offs, but, more importantly, to get a run in the FA Cup and the FA Trophy. If promotion is there then you take it, but it was about a cup run.

‘Bracknell came to us last Saturday after probably making a couple of hundred grand from their FA Cup run and playing Ipswich. They have money to burn, we don’t.

‘Our sponsorship commitments are poor, very poor, our gates are the lowest cost in the league, bar sales are the cheapest in the league, you can’t have a Centre of Excellence for nothing and you can’t have an excellent pitch like this for nothing.

‘At this level of football, clubs must be part of the community and the community have to be part of them, so we’ve been involved in the Feed a Family in Need scheme, helping feed 8,800 people, and the Gosport Community Pantry.

‘But I am frustrated right now, very frustrated. We were ninth last year and this season the wheels have come off faster than the Red Bull team can put them back on again.’

Last weekend’s 4-0 home defeat to Bracknell was harsh for Gosport, with two goals in the final two minutes giving an unrealistic look to the scoreline considering the spirited second-half showing from caretaker boss Ben Kneller’s men.

Nonetheless, a season’s best crowd of 725 turned up to watch the strugglers, with only high-flying Weston-super-Mare boasting a higher average gate in this season’s division.

It’s impressive supporter backing from the town which offers timely encouragement to McInnes amid the current agonies.

‘So many people came up to me on Saturday and said “I feel sorry for you, mate. Stick with it”,’ he added.

‘People seem to be almost terrified that I'm actually going to walk away and then what happens? The club would fold.

‘I have spent £600,000 since I arrived here, but I don’t consider it to be my football club. It’s Gosport Borough Football Club, it was before I came and will be when I go.

‘My football club is over there and, on a Saturday afternoon, I often look at the Spinnaker Tower and the three generations of my family who are instead at Fratton Park.

‘I’m not leaving, though, not right now, because there is so much going on. I intend to see this through, I couldn’t walk away.

‘A lot of people have been telling me to leave before now – and a lot of people are telling me if I don’t then it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

‘I’m not quite sure I believe that, but I am not going to walk away from this football club until we’ve got this fixed, whatever the fix is. That’s just not me.’

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