RAFA Benitez is not the only manager with a neatly-sculpted goatee staring into the abyss this weekend. But it's possible that if invited to empathise, Steven Tweed would want to know what the Liverpool manager's problem was.
It's not as if he has to cobble together a squad from just ten fit players, or supplement the club kitty with 50p contributions from players who allow themselves to be nutmegged in training.
While Benitez, whose side seek to avoid a fifth succe
ssive defeat tomorrow against Manchester United, may also be hamstrung by debt, it has not been accumulated in order to pay for the synthetic pitch upon which Montrose have managed to remain without victory this season.
The Angus club, so the old joke goes, are the strongest side in Scotland; they currently hold everyone else up. This afternoon will find Tweed and his team at Banks O' Dee. It sounds a pleasant enough excursion. But rest assured, blood and snotters will be spilled and Tweed knows he can't afford for his team to lose a Scottish Cup tie that is a gateway to further riches down the line.
Knowing it might sound sour and uncharitable following a possibly fatal – for him at least – defeat, Tweed issued his equivalent of a broadside on the game's eve. Like much of what he says, it is measured and not without merit. Montrose, he insists, should not even have to go to play Banks O' Dee, a worryingly well-organised side from Aberdeen and current North East Junior Super League champions.
"I don't think Scottish junior clubs should be playing in the Scottish Cup," he points out. "That's my own personal opinion. We don't play in the Scottish Junior Cup. Why should they have two bites at the cherry? There's the Scottish Junior Cup and there's a Scottish Cup. You don't have to try and make it more interesting. It's artificial. We have had the likes of Berwick Rangers beating Rangers. That's what a scalp is."
He adds: "Obviously it is important for financial reasons to get through and get a decent club in the next round. We lost to them in a pre-season friendly. For them to get Montrose, they will be delighted. They will think they have a chance."
Tweed's viewpoint is shaped by his recent exposure to Scottish football's badlands; a landscape populated by clubs with names well-known to football fans, but who cannot trade on recognition alone. The likes of Forfar Athletic, Cowdenbeath and Queen's Park have been Pools Panel mainstays, but exist always on the edge of oblivion.
"The financial side of things is a lot more significant than certainly I anticipated, and perhaps what the chairman (Brian Winton] anticipated," admits Tweed. "Loans have to be paid off that we were unaware of. It will be another two or three years before the synthetic pitch starts to generate cash. That is not going to help me."
He admits: "It's been a culture shock. You're not just turning up for training, you are there at four, five o'clock. And then you are locking up afterwards. On my first night I was handed a key: 'This is for you to lock up with. And remember not to leave any lights on'."
An acknowledgement of these harsh realities might see Tweed preserved in his post. The jaunty and somewhat essential Montrose fans' blog Gable End Graffiti spelt it out after the recent 2-1 defeat by Queen's Park. "In normal circumstances, fans of a team with a record as atrocious as ours would chase the manager out of town with air and artillery support," writes Steeplejack. "But everyone knows where the problem lies at our club – and it isn't in the dug-out."
The club were helped by former director of football Kenny Black's investment, although this has tailed off now. Tweed is relying on an SoS fund set-up by fans. He himself could prove invaluable in the boardroom. In his other life, the one he crams in between management – "it's 24-7, there's no getting away from it" – and fatherhood, Tweed is a financial advisor. Asked how he would advise Montrose, his counsel is the product of sound sense: "Debt always costs a lot more to maintain in the long run," he says.
Like every club of similar stature, Montrose are also in debt to those who invest time. Many such individuals, who can properly be termed worthies of Scottish football, were gathered alongside the greats of the world game inside Brechin cathedral for former Fifa vice-president David Will's recent funeral.
"I am not saying John Paton (the Montrose president] is a David Will, but apart from a spell at St Mirren he has been here most of his adult life," says Tweed. "He has a love for the club, and the town. And to give up not just time, but money too. It's a contribution because it will never be got back. You don't give money to these clubs to get it back. Money just does not exist. If David Murray gives money to Rangers and is not getting it back, then it's not going to happen at Montrose."
It is not just that Montrose are bottom of the Third Division, or are strangled by debt after a moderate spending spree a couple of seasons ago. Giving Tweed further cause for anxiety is the club's reputation for being less than patient with managers. They went through half a dozen last season, finally settling on Tweed. In the 1990s, such was the rate of hiring and firing going on down by the Angus sea-front, they were in danger of making neighbours Arbroath's infamous hotseat seem lukewarm by comparison. This is, though, what life is like in the twilight zone of a handful of fans.
Such has been the turnover that notable appointments amid a succession of names are guaranteed. Doug Rougvie and Jim Leishman were two, while the 'Mo' can also claim to have once been cutting edge. In 1995 the club appointed Scottish football's first black manager in Dave Smith. Tweed, too, boasts a higher profile than is usual at this level, and has cast a spotlight on the club from as far away as Japan.
The former Dundee and Hibernian centre-half spent over two years playing in the Far East with Yokohama F Marinos, and still has friends there. A contingent is due to visit Angus next month. He also played in Greece and Germany, and during his time in the latter country was managed, at MSV Duisburg, by Pierre Littbarski. The experience meant he is familiar with the problem of coaching players who fall some way below the manager's own standard.
Tweed simply asked Littbarski, a World Cup winner with West Germany in 1990, how he resisted tearing his hair out when forced to work with players like himself. He had the opportunity to pose this question in person when the German was masterminding the first Scottish European setback of the season. Vaduz eliminated Falkirk from the Europa League over two legs, and Tweed spent an evening with the 73-times capped midfielder. "I asked him how he coped with me having played with people like Jurgen Klinsmann," says Tweed. "He said he just switched off mentally, and thought: 'This is what I have got. I know your limitations'."
Perhaps this was Claudio Caniggia's strategy when he sat across from Tweed in the Dundee dressing room at the beginning of this decade. Tweed has accumulated a host of stories in a career which has spanned continents as well as decades, since making his debut for Hibs in 1991. He is toying with the idea of putting it all in a book but must first employ Littbarski's advice about resisting any temptation to bawl out players who struggle with the basics.
"It can be frustrating," he admits. "But what's most frustrating is when you see good players, and they are just not interested. They are happy to be where they are, earning £100 or whatever a week." Former Hibs 'keeper Andrew McNeil joined Montrose earlier this season in what was described as a signing coup. Happily, reports Tweed, he has the opposite attitude.
"Andy really wants to get back up the ladder," he says. "But there are others who are quite content in their next stop being down the ladder. A lot of them are better than this. Andy McNeil is obviously better than Montrose. But this is where Andy McNeil is right now. And he has to prove to people by playing for Montrose that he is due a better club. Only by playing well and putting himself in the shop window will he do that."
An additional complication of life in the lower leagues is discipline, and how to impose it. Tweed is conscious of the sacrifices players make to simply turn up for training twice a week, having already spent the day at work. "You risk losing a player if you fine them a week's wages," he says. "And there are things you don't want to do to people. The last thing you want to do is take their earnings from them.
"But if they get nutmegged they have to pay 50p so they can build up a kitty, and if they are late for the bus they might be fined ten per cent of whatever it is they earn. But it's Christmas around the corner. And I need to keep them."
He can at least rely on the continued support of one member of the side – himself. Tweed, 37, is playing on among team-mates young enough to be his son. It's a taxing existence, but fulfilling. He prays it won't end this afternoon, that he hasn't turned the lights out at Links Park for the last time.
