On whether Jack Ross was the right man for the job
Yes. We interviewed a lot of people and I felt as if they could all actually do a job at the club. But I felt Jack was the outstanding candidate and the fan ownership thing with Hearts is a big bonus for us as well so he’s definitely the right guy for the job.
He’s a winner. He actually has a very similar philosophy to myself in life in the way he moves forward and I think that’s important. I can relate to him and he can relate to me and we can work together going forward.
We both just have an ambition to succeed and do the best we can and want to enjoy our football. We want the fans to enjoy the football, we want to engage with fans again and get them enjoying themselves on a Saturday. We just want to achieve the best we can for the football club."
On Mike Mulraney’s positive comments about Jack
We actually went to the Alloa game; watched the first half, watched how the team set up, watched Jack’s reactions and talked to Mike Mulraney. We have done a lot of due diligence on this - we’ve not just dived in. We talked to top managers. People think we offered various people the job but we never. We wanted to talk to them, we wanted to learn about the process and wanted to learn what it takes to be a top manager. I’m happy it’s a good process. At the end of the day the results speak volumes and they’re up near the top of the league.
I don’t want to see us playing defensive football but we need to stop losing goals. I think we lost over two goals a game on average and you can't win games if you have to score three goals in every match. We have to get stronger at the back and keep being expressive up front."
On the process of bringing in a new manager
It was interesting. It was important to learn, to go through a process where we felt we were doing the right thing and it was a decision as a board. It wasn’t just my decision and it was important that we were all on-board with that decision. It was an eye-opener that we got such good candidates."
I want to be talking about how we take the club forward, how we change things in the stadium, how we bring more money into the club etc. Hopefully I’m done for the next 10 years talking about football and managers."
