By Graeme Dey

LAST NOVEMBER, with St Johnstone fans still celebrating the club’s lifting of the Challenge Cup—the first national trophy ever won by Saints—Brown pulled a rabbit out of the hat.

The McDiarmid Park outfit needed a replacement for Owen Coyle.

A variety of well known names were being touted about.

But Brown stunned everyone by appointing club captain Derek McInnes to the role.

From the more cynical wing of the St Johnstone faithful came the accusation he had gone for the cheapest possible option.

As the months have passed and McInnes has started to make his mark on the team, the doubts over his suitability for the job has disappeared.

According to Brown, though, appointing the former Rangers, West Brom and Dundee United midfielder was from the outset a no-brainer for the Perth board.

“Two managers ago (John Connolly) I got pulled into the belief that this guy who was a hero before as a player and had a reasonable track record as a manager might have been the answer,” recalls the chairman.

“And we came unstuck.

“So when we had to appoint a replacement for Owen Coyle it was a major consideration for the whole board.

“There was nothing broken because Owen had done a good job.

“But it was still imperative that we made the decision right.

“When there’s a managerial vacancy to fill you look out into that big bad world and find that the guys likely to be available to do the job are guys who have failed somewhere else.

“And we were sitting there thinking ‘We’re not looking for failure, we want success.’

“Now to have success you have to have knowledge of what’s happening in your league and the contacts that’ll lead you to the players who will improve your team.

“And Del fitted that bill.

“We were also struck by the fact that compared to what he’d been earning at Dundee United as a player he was probably on less than a quarter with us.

“This isn’t a guy who was prepared to sit tight at Tannadice picking up the money he was entitled to. He wanted to get on with his career (McInnes left United for Millwall before being snapped up by Coyle).

“Speaking to everyone who knew him, directly or indirectly, it was clear he’s a shrewd guy.

“And we found ourselves asking, ‘Why not give him the chance?’

“People talked about it being a gamble.

“But I’d about 30 other people wanting the job all of whom would have been a gamble.

“And in our opinion appointing Derek wasn’t the cheap option as some claimed—it was the least of all the gambles we might have taken.”

Nothing that has happened since unveiling McInnes has made Brown question the wisdom of that decision.

“The way Derek conducts himself around the club, the way he goes about his business, some of the decisions he’s made... he’ll do for me,” says a man who is not easily impressed.