Gus MacPherson

Name: Gus MacPherson

Current Club: Unattached

Position: Defender/Manager

Saints Career: Gus arrived from Dunfermline in 2003 as a player and assistant to John Coughlin. It's fair to say he wasn't that great a player for us, although his best performance was against Raith Rovers - which was also his last game due to injury. Coughlin's sacking at the end of 2003 saw him appointed caretaker and some good results got him the job full time. After avoiding relegation, he guided us to second in 2005 before going one better the following season, winning us the first division and the League Challenge Cup. Kept us in the SPL in 2007 and guided us to 10th in 2008. However, for whatever reason the league form dropped a bit then. We stayed up in 2008/09 by just two goals, although we did make the Scottish Cup semi-finals. The following season we made the League Cup for just the second time in history, but lost to nine man Rangers - then gubbed Celtic a few days later! Once again it was a relegation battle, this time we finished 10th. The numbers of dissenting Saints fans were growing by this stage, thinking we should be achieving more than we were. There's no arguing that we were in a far better shape than before Gus took over, but the final two years had been pretty poor in the leagues and there were some odd signings.

Post Saints Career: In May 2010, just days after the season finished, Gus was sacked - having been the longest serving manager at Saints for the best part of 50 years. He spent around a year out of work, doing the odd bit of media work, before taking the Queen of the South job in 2011. He was always in for a hard job as the club had hardly any players signed and hardly any money, a poor season ending when they were relegated to the second division. After that Gus left, claiming he'd decided a month or so before the end of the season he'd be going.