Big Dunc’s book

[Yngwie]

I see Big Dunc has a book coming out next week. I won’t call it an autobiography because there is no way he actually wrote it, but he’s certainly had an interesting life and I’ll be interested to know what (if anything) he says about his time with us.

[Yngwie]

Oh, and are we about to discover that Scot Gardiner placed a pre-order of 50,000 copies for the club shop?! 

[+DoofersDad]

1 hour ago, Yngwie said:

Oh, and are we about to discover that Scot Gardiner placed a pre-order of 50,000 copies for the club shop?! 

That would be 50,000 more copies than he wanted of "Milestones and Memories".

[big cherly]

Just seen the big eejit on Football Focus with Moyes and others at Goodison and he came across as the same brainless loon that blessed our club in the final part of the Gardener era. 
Heaven help any club that takes a try with him as manager. 
bc 

Edited May 3 by big cherly

[+snorbens_caleyman]

3 hours ago, Yngwie said:

I see Big Dunc has a book coming out next week. I won’t call it an autobiography because there is no way he actually wrote it

If it stops halfway and then starts going backwards, we'll know that he DID write it

[+TheCaleyOne]

1 hour ago, snorbens_caleyman said:

If it stops halfway and then starts going backwards, we'll know that he DID write it

Brilliant , winner of post of the season for me!

[bdu98196]

Is it was written in crayon?

[Starscape]

23 hours ago, bdu98196 said:

Is it was written in crayon?

No red ink and all in capitals from chapter 5 onwards 

[+CaleyD]

General Nonsense for this ****!

[+snorbens_caleyman]

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2025/may/02/duncan-ferguson-questions-everton-rangers-dundee-united-newcastle-scotland

The Guardian is asking for questions for Big Dunc, ahead of the publication of his book.

I have submitted the following question:

"What do you think of Inverness Caledonian Thistle's performance this season after you left them, and after they were deducted 15 points for going into administration?"

I doubt if it will see the light of day 

[LisleRightPeg]

My book just arrived. I’m looking forward to reading it! 

[+snorbens_caleyman]

On 5/4/2025 at 7:17 PM, snorbens_caleyman said:

The Guardian is asking for questions for Big Dunc, ahead of the publication of his book.

I have submitted the following question:

"What do you think of Inverness Caledonian Thistle's performance this season after you left them, and after they were deducted 15 points for going into administration?"

I doubt if it will see the light of day 

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2025/may/11/duncan-ferguson-everton-pigeons-biggest-regrets-questions

My question didn't make it 

Only mention of us is in the very last paragraph, answering a question about proudest moment and biggest regret in his managerial career.

"But as a manager I’ve picked two really tough jobs. Dynamo couldn’t have saved Forest Green Rovers but when results aren’t there people start to abandon you. I didn’t know where Forest Green was. They were not my players. They were bottom of the league. This was late January. They had no chance of staying up but I thought, after speaking to the guy, I’d get the rebuild for next year. But promises, promises …

When I went into Inverness they were bottom with one point. I took us 19 points above the automatic relegation place and into a playoff, where a refereeing decision against Hamilton killed me. It’s not put me off. I improved Everton and Inverness. I lost my job at Inverness through administration – you couldn’t make it up."

[Yngwie]

17 minutes ago, snorbens_caleyman said:

When I went into Inverness they were bottom with one point. I took us 19 points above the automatic relegation place and into a playoff, where a refereeing decision against Hamilton killed me. It’s not put me off. I improved Everton and Inverness. I lost my job at Inverness through administration – you couldn’t make it up."

Clearly we were mad to get rid of him!

[IBM]

Same old from him

[Scotty]

1 hour ago, snorbens_caleyman said:

When I went into Inverness they were bottom with one point. I took us 19 points above the automatic relegation place and into a playoff, where a refereeing decision against Hamilton killed me. It’s not put me off. I improved Everton and Inverness. I lost my job at Inverness through administration – you couldn’t make it up."

He will forever be able to say that he lost his job due to administration, but after a 2-6-2 record in 2024/25 (12 pts) and some horrible football, I think he would have been long gone had the administrator not saved his bacon and sacked him. To be fair, he did only lose two games in 24/25, but his style saw us turn potential wins into 6 draws in 10 games. His replacement put up a 14-4-8 W-D-L record over the rest of the season, still losing games, sometimes when we shouldn't, but those draws turned into wins and that was a huge factor in staying up. 

I wanted to like DF at ICT, and some of his banter was - and still is - entertaining to listen to, and I even appreciate him taking a pay cut before administration, but if he had been left to continue the season, even for another month then I think we would have been relegated or at least in the playoffs again.  Kell's record in his first 10 games was 6-1-3 (19 pts) ... which was 7 points more than Dunc's first 10 games ... and we missed the playoffs by 7 points!  If he did not get punted on the first day of administration, the conversation we are having now might have been very different.  

 

 

 

[The Long Man]

I find it impossible to dislike him as a person. He is a happy-go-lucky affable guy who has been in plenty of scrapes and has charmed a lot of people along the way, as well as playing some great football. Very entertaining to listen to. Clearly, however, he is not cut out to be a manager, and I place the blame on his hiring on the person who thought a big name character would be a managerial coup. Well, it was, just not in the way he thought.

Any other manager, including the maligned Dodds would probably have kept in us in the championship. The funny thing about that is, though, that might have prolonged the dysfunctional running of the club and in turn might have made matters even worse than they turned out to be. In other words, the relegation under Duncan might have been the catalyst for everything that has happened since, ie the resurrection of a club in imminent danger of extinction and the hopeful survival on a more stable and financially responsible footing.

So every cloud.. etc. That decision to employ Duncan might have been, perversely, the saving of us, in the long term. It's a funny old world. No point in remonstrating against Dunc, though. He was the fall guy for a bigger fish.

 

Edited May 15 by The Long Man

[+DoofersDad]

Big Dunc's comments about our club and the fans show him as a little man in terms of taking responsibility for his own failings.

He criticises the club's facilities as a disgrace, and whilst we all know they are pretty poor, he should have ensured he knew what facilities the club had before he took the post.  Or was he just so desperate for a job that he didn't even bother to find out the first thing about the club before taking the money?

He criticises the fans for not liking his style of football.  He suggests we would rather see a caber being tossed but that he likes his teams to play football.  Well, the problem was that the fans want to see a footballing team and we weren't getting that with his over-emphasis on possession.  Not only has the football been far more entertaining since he left, it has also been far more successful, despite his successor having to lose players due to the administration and having restrictions on what players could be brought in.

He also criticises the fans for abuse of his son, Cameron.  Now, I don't condone the abuse young Cameron got in any way, but he wouldn't have got any abuse if he hadn't have been here.  Big Dunc seems to take no responsibility for his nepotism of putting his son into a team well above the ability of the poor lad.  He wasn't good enough and he shouldn't have been here.

He criticises the Board (fair enough!) but makes absolutely no mention of our former CEO who took the credit for signing Big Dunc and who therefore would have had a responsibility for appraising him of the facilities and circumstances of the club.  It seems Big Dunc isn't big enough to say anything about the person most people feel is most responsible for the club's problems and consequently for his redundancy.

 

[Charles Bannerman]

4 hours ago, The Long Man said:

I find it impossible to dislike him as a person. He is a happy-go-lucky affable guy who has been in plenty of scrapes and has charmed a lot of people along the way, as well as playing some great football. Very entertaining to listen to. Clearly, however, he is not cut out to be a manager, and I place the blame on his hiring on the person who thought a big name character would be a managerial coup. Well, it was, just not in the way he thought.

Any other manager, including the maligned Dodds would probably have kept in us in the championship. The funny thing about that is, though, that might have prolonged the dysfunctional running of the club and in turn might have made matters even worse than they turned out to be. In other words, the relegation under Duncan might have been the catalyst for everything that has happened since, ie the resurrection of a club in imminent danger of extinction and the hopeful survival on a more stable and financially responsible footing.

So every cloud.. etc. That decision to employ Duncan might have been, perversely, the saving of us, in the long term. It's a funny old world. No point in remonstrating against Dunc, though. He was the fall guy for a bigger fish.

 

Excellent post Long Man! You are absolutely right about Duncan being a very decent bloke (albeit his “caber” comment is typical patronising central beltism which I resent) who was drawn into a job that was beyond him. This was  result of money the club didn’t have being thrown at him by a narcissistic CEO who turned everything he touched into dust. I would also contend that part of the stick Duncan got from the fans was actually a product of growing frustration at the pig’s ear and the toxic atmosphere that were created by Gardiner.

You make an intriguing point about what might have happened if Billy Dodds had stayed, and I agree that the team would probably have stayed up… but I believe that this would have prolonged even further the catastrophic Gardiner - Morrison regime to the extent that by the time it did collapse, the club would have been beyond saving and the only outcome would have been liquidation.

As a result, Scot Gardiner’s ego trip appointment of Duncan Ferguson not only accelerated Gardiner’s own welcome demise, but also brought the club’s situation to a head just in time to save it from disappearing altogether.

[+CaleyHedgehog]

8 hours ago, Charles Bannerman said:

his “caber” comment is typical patronising central beltism

That comment really got to me too, but I love your 'patronising central beltism' phrase - it absolutely nails exactly why it is so insulting.

[The Long Man]

8 hours ago, Charles Bannerman said:

As a result, Scot Gardiner’s ego trip appointment of Duncan Ferguson not only accelerated Gardiner’s own welcome demise, but also brought the club’s situation to a head just in time to save it from disappearing altogether.

Yes, that was my point. The football gods do indeed work in mysterious ways.

Edited May 16 by The Long Man

[Charles Bannerman]

4 hours ago, CaleyHedgehog said:

That comment really got to me too, but I love your 'patronising central beltism' phrase - it absolutely nails exactly why it is so insulting.

It’s a long term way of life up here of which there are several instances in football alone.

My favourite one is when Graham Spiers wrote in the Herald that he would eat his hat if Caley Thistle survived a season in the SPL. When they did, a mate of mine who was the athletics correspondent at the paper at the time asked me if I could get a Caley Thistle hat for him - which I duly did and even got Craig Brewster and Malky Thomson to sign it. This was duly presented to Spiers in the full glare of a very full Herald newsroom.

[caley100]

I've got a CD with Peatbog fairies and Spiers interview to their music, must dig it out and put it on here.

Big Dunc was out of his depth with delusions of grandeur of getting our players to emulate Real Madrid.