When Ayr United’s bid to win promotion ended in failure at the end of last season, Scott Brown’s criticism of his players was brutal and unsparing.
After watching his team blow a first-leg lead and lose to Partick Thistle in the play-offs, the former Celtic captain essentially threw them under a bus.
‘Late on, they weren’t even trying to win the game, if I’m honest,’ he said. ‘It’s just about desire and mentality … I need to have a long, hard think about things now and see where I go from here.’
To slaughter his players so publicly, while questioning his own future as manager, only fuelled suspicions that a parting of the ways could well be on the cards.
Ayr chairman David Smith eventually quashed those rumours, insisting that Brown would not walk away and that his comments had been ‘taken a little bit out of context’.
The plan was for everyone – the club, the manager, the players – to have a reset over the summer before mounting another promotion push with a fresh start in the new season.
Scott Brown’s Ayr United have not made a good start to the new Championship season
Brown was a wonderful captain at Celtic but he can’t live on reputation forever as a manager
Plainly, things are not going to plan. Even with the new campaign still in its infancy, the doubts about Brown’s future and his suitability as manager have only grown louder.
Ayr have made a poor start to the Championship season, taking only one point from their opening two matches. A 1-1 draw away at Arbroath on the opening day was followed by a 1-0 home defeat to Raith Rovers last weekend.
Two eminently winnable games, they represented a great chance for the Honest Men to make a fast start as they looked to keep pace with title favourites St Johnstone at the top of the table.
Instead, the outpouring of anger from punters at Somerset Park last weekend after Raith defeat made it clear that Brown is now running out of time to turn this around.
It is too simplistic to view last season through the prism of losing in the play-offs. Truth be told, Ayr’s slide started long before the defeat to Thistle in May.
They limped into the play-offs, winning only two of their last nine matches. Having been in title contention at one stage midway through the season, they faltered and fell away badly at the business end of the season.
Brown had been well backed financially. Speaking last season, club chairman Smith revealed that the manager had been afforded the biggest budget in the club’s history.
Players like Curtis Main were signed for good money, with the striker’s wages understood to be in excess of £1,500 per week.
Brown was sacked as manager of Fleetwood Town after 16 months in charge
Time could be running out for Celtic icon as he tries to get things right at Ayr United
Main contributed just four goals in 15 games. He didn’t score at all after March 8 and eventually lost his place in the team.
His goal drought became emblematic of how Ayr struggled over the final couple of months of last season – and he has returned for the new campaign looking typically cumbersome and unimpressive.
In all fairness, Brown has not been helped by injuries. Captain Ben Dempsey, the beating heart of the Ayr midfield, could be a mid-to-long-term absentee. Key striker Anton Dowds has been missing since last September after rupturing his cruciate ligament.
Kevin Holt was signed on decent wages in the summer and was expected to provide experience in central defence. Injury has sidelined him for the first two league games thus far.
However, Brown’s tactical approach also has to be questioned. Instance the chaos and confusion in defence, when trying to play out from the back, which led to Raith scoring the opening goal inside the first minute last weekend.
Ayr had Kyle Ure and Jude Bonnar in their starting line-up, two teenagers who were recruited from the Celtic youth set-up.
These guys are still young and very much learning their trade, yet they are being asked to cope with the rigours and demands of Championship football.
Despite the financial backing that has been afforded to him, Brown has not been able to assemble a squad that is suited to a tilt at winning promotion.
Brown holds another trophy aloft during his glory years with the Scottish champions
Ayr actually feel further away from that ambition now than they did 12 months ago. They look like a team who have regressed – and Brown is beginning to resemble a manager who is struggling to come up with the answers.
Some fans questioned whether his heart was really in it anymore after those comments towards the end of last season.
A trip to face Partick Thistle in the Premier Sports Cup on Saturday already feels like it could be huge for Brown in terms of injecting some momentum back into Ayr’s season.
He remains under contract until 2027, and the club clearly want him to lead them back to the Premiership.
But Brown can’t live on reputation forever. The fact he was continuing to be linked with top-flight jobs over the summer was a nonsense.
His time in charge of Fleetwood ended in failure. He needs to buck up his ideas or else his stint at Somerset Park will go the same way.
No-one can relight the fire in ineffectual Adam Idah
When he spoke in the aftermath of Celtic’s 2-0 win at Aberdeen last Sunday, Brendan Rodgers did his best to put an arm round Adam Idah.
Describing the misfiring striker as a ‘big, honest boy’, Rodgers made the argument that the Irishman simply needs extra competition up front if he is to rediscover his best form.
That, of course, was total nonsense.
Idah shouldn’t need anything from anyone else. All the best strikers will tell you – the desire to perform and score goals has to come from within.
The arrival of another new striker before the end of the transfer window would only serve to deepen the pool of players available to Rodgers and push Idah further down the pecking order.
The reality is that Celtic vastly overpaid for Idah when they forked out the guts of £9million to sign him from Norwich last summer.
Brendan Rodgers has claimed he needs a new striker to gee up Adam Idah
That’s not the player’s fault. He didn’t set the price-tag. He wasn’t responsible for Celtic failing to insert a clause into his initial loan deal which would have meant they could buy him at a reduced cost.
But he is most certainly not the main man for Celtic up front. He probably never will be. In reality, they’ve paid £9m for a guy who’s essentially a squad player.
When Kyogo Furuhashi left in January, that should have been the green light for Idah to kick on and nail down his place as Celtic’s main striker.
Tall, powerful and quick – he has many of the raw tools and attributes you would want in a striker. But too often he drifts through games and is ineffectual.
If Celtic do sign another striker before the end of the window, and surely they will, it’s unlikely that it will light a fire within Idah, as Rodgers seemed to suggest.
Instead, it will only confirm he belongs among the rank and file of the Celtic squad rather than being the main man up front.
