Ross Jack's Five Year Plan

Today, the news broke that Ross Jack and Elgin City “mutually agreed” to part company. It followed Elgin’s 2-0 defeat to Queen’s Park on Saturday where his side performed abysmally. The fact that Jack did not fill the bench at New Broomfield has led many to suggest that relations between the manager and the board were not on an even keel.

Jack was Elgin’s longest serving manager since the club gained admittance to the Scottish Football League, lasting one day short of five years. When he took over the club they were positioned bottom and finished the 2008/09 season in that position. That was followed by 9^th, 7^th, 4^th and 5^th placed finishes. However, this season has started badly, with the club performing inconsistently.

It was clear that the past two seasons saw Elgin’s best chances of promotion since their arrival in the SFL in 2000. The playoff defeat to a poor Albion Rovers side in 2012 was pretty galling for the club and last year the club had numerous opportunities to secure a play-off place, only to squander them.

Elgin’s inability to be clinical last season arguably cost them the services of two of their star performers – winger Daniel Moore and striker Stuart Leslie, who both joined Nairn County in the summer. The former is allegedly pocketing £1000 a week from County, and Leslie was offered a four year contract to join the Station Park club. Money that Elgin just couldn’t compete with. The loss of Moore and Leslie was compounded to injuries to key players such as Mark Nicholson and Sean Crighton, who were unavailable at the start of the season and Paul Millar out long term. The midfield situation was made worse by the injury of key man Brian Cameron.

Since Cameron’s injury, Elgin have looked utterly imbalanced. New summer signing Shane Sutherland has proved wanting – undoubtedly there is a player of talent there, but his attributes were not being used to their optimum by Jack. At times this season, and especially in recent matches away to Annan and Queen’s Park, there has been no structure to the side beyond the back four.

The signing of former Peterhead goalkeeper, Raymond Jellema solved a perennial goalkeeping problem for Elgin but he has not had the luxury of a settled back four in front of him. Club captain David Niven has looked poor at right back where his selection is all the more galling when he has a perfectly capable natural right back sitting on the bench in the young Graeme Beveridge.

The defensive frailties are there for all to see. After the losing the lead to Annan on 28^th December, Elgin were in 9^th place having dropped 15 points from winning positions – they would have been in 2^nd place had they held onto their leads.

Jack’s biggest weakness has been the deployment of personnel in the midfield and forward line. Frankly, at points this season, the defence and the rest of the team have looked alien to each other. There are a number of talented players on the books at Borough Briggs – Mark Nicholson, Paul Harkins, Ally MacKenzie, Shane Sutherland, Brian Cameron, Dennis Wyness and Craig Gunn are, on their day, some of the most talented players in the league – but under Jack this season, there was no balance and no positional awareness from the players, which often lead the defence exposed.

There is no question that bad luck has played a part in Ross Jack’s downfall at Elgin, but Elgin under his tenure have simply not been clinical enough to see games out when playing with a lead.

The rumour mill is in full flow and the early front-runners for the job are John Robertson and former player Barry Wilson. Both would be intriguing appointments for the club, but with the impending relegation playoffs from the bottom division, the board must be hoping for a gaffer who can salvage something from this season, consolidate and build for next season.

There’s potential in Elgin – attendances were reaching 1000 when the going was good in the last two seasons. Whether the new man in charge can harness that potential is another thing altogether. The club has wallowed in the bottom tier for the last 14 years, a new manager backed by a board with ambitions above mediocrity coupled with the fear of relegation back to the Highland League could be catalyst that City require.