'Gang mentality' eyed by former Hibs star in latest managerial role as he takes boss job at SPFL club
The former Hibs midfielder has taken on a job at League One level in the SPFL.
A former Hibs star is aiming to bring a hard-working approach to his latest managerial job after being appointed Airdrieonians boss.
John Rankin ended the season as interim gaffer at Ayr United but the Championship side opted for Gary Naysmith on a permanent basis after his work with Stenhousemuir. Rankin earned plaudits for navigating Hamilton Accies amid testing financial challenges and now earns his next gig at Airdrie, where he is from, as successor to Aaron Taylor-Sinclair.
The Diamonds are starting from scratch after relegation to League One and Rankin is keen to bring identity fans can relate to. Rankin featured prominently in midfield for the likes of Hibs and Dundee United as a player before starting his coaching journey in the youth ranks at Hearts. He arrived at Hamilton in a coaching capacity initially before becoming their gaffer across Championship and League One levels.
Who is the new Airdrie manager?
He told club media: “My initial reaction was, of course, excitement. I'm from the town and it was just a straight away yes let's have a conversation. Obviously it follows on and you start to think about the project in hand and how exciting that is. It feels a wee bit like you're coming home, I mean my family's still in the town, my mum and dad are still here, my sister's here, so it all adds up and it's that wee bit of a sentiment that you're looking at and as I said the excitement
”It's a blank canvas, I think there's only a handful of players and there's no coaching staff. So everything needs built and that's probably the bit that you can think, ‘right we can put our own stamp on it.’ So coming in and meeting the guys this morning, they've got a lot of things in place in regards to recruitment and how they work. So it's just trying to obviously meet people. We've got a lot of meetings to go on after this and looking forward to it.
“That initial contact and people that are involved at the club makes the excitement, but then when you get involved in results, the tactical, the building a team, the building a staff, building a team on the pitch that work hard, I mean this place is built on hard work. It's a working class town and nobody gets anywhere from here without working hard.
Why has John Rankin joined Airdrie?
“So it needs to be a team that works hard on the pitch first and foremost. Then we'll build it from there. There's a lot of work to be done, we don't shy away from hard work, we roll our sleeves up and we go and get on with it. That's part of the bit where it's exciting, a lot of players to speak to, a lot of staff to speak to, there's jobs to be filled and roles to be filled and it'll be a team effort. We're looking forward to it.
“You look at the teams in the past, they've been built on purely hard work, hard work, graft and probably a bit of a gang mentality. We need to get that back, we need to have that mentality. Airdrie throughout the last few years have played some really good football and we want to have an element of that amongst it as well. What we need to do is we need to have a team on the pitch that relates to the supporters and relates to the history of this place.
“That's what we intend to do. Obviously you're not going to please everybody and I get that, that's part and parcel of football, and everybody's got an opinion on it. Ultimately the aim is we need to win games and we need to start with that and build a squad to do that. Patience will be the key because Rome wasn't built in a day, we know that, and we need to put the starting blocks in place where we can go and build something. Then have a wee bit of patience with the players because they're all getting to know one another.”
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