Mark Reynolds

Mark recently spoke to RedMatchday Magazine:

It's not often these days that players hang around at a football club for too long, and when they do, they generally get taken for granted. But those stalwarts are often the bedrock of the dressing room, the men who understand what makes a club tick, who gave a feel for what it stands for.

Here at Pittodrie, we are lucky that we can include Mark Reynolds among that number, luckier still that he has agreed a deal to take his stay here through to 2019, not bad for somebody who initially only signed up for six months back in January 2012.

“When the manager asked me to extend my deal again and commit for another two years I was delighted. I have made no secret of the fact I have loved my time here, nor that I would like to finish my career here. I would be quite happy to do that. Hopefully I have still got a few good years left in me yet though. My two boys were born in Aberdeen, they are Aberdonians, so my family are settled here and it’s where we enjoy being.

“I have been lucky to come here at a time when Aberdeen have been on the rise. Every season, we seem to get better and better and the signs for this season are looking good again. I’ve been heavily involved in most of the campaigns and we have done well. We have challenged at the top of the league, we’ve won a cup, we’ve played in finals, we have been in Europe pretty much every year since the gaffer came. On the park, things have been good and Pittodrie has been a good place to be.

“For me, enjoying my football is one of the biggest things. When I started, I was at Motherwell where I was enjoying my football and playing every week. I took it for granted that I would play every week and then I went down to Sheffield Wednesday and it did not work out. At that point I realised just how much I actually enjoy playing. To get back up here and be involved as much as I have been over the seasons is one of the reasons for me staying.

“The driving force for me coming here in the first place was my desire to play games. Craig Brown phoned me when I was at Sheffield Wednesday and he knew that I wanted to be playing games. He told me that he could offer me that up here. He sold the club to me. Six months turned into half a decade.

“Craig told me the club was ready to go somewhere. The foundations were there. From his experience in the game, he could see that. It just needed someone like the gaffer to come in and take it on with his energy and his ethos on how he wanted to play football.

“The manager just changed lots of little things over the years – the way we train, where we train, how long we train for, where we stay nights before games, what time we travel down at. He has expanded the football department, he brought in Graham Kirk, he has expanded the physio department. He goes into so much detail with our preparations and leaves no stone unturned. If we can get one percent better at something, then he will go and get it.

“He will also not say this is the way we are doing something and that is it going forward, end of story. If he thinks something else will work, he will tweak it. We have done that right the way through. It is constantly evolving. He has a lot of things down to a science.

“The way we manage time off during the international weeks is a good example. We used to get some time off and would come back in on the Monday. But we have changed that now and we come back in on a Sunday because the Sport Science people have looked at the numbers and think we get more benefit that way. Even just little things like that can make a big difference. It's all in the detail.

“He is also a winner. He wants to win every game and that is something that runs through the core of the club. Although we have a lot of new players this season, we have always managed to retain a core of boys, players who have run the race before, know what is needed so when you are bringing new faces into the squad, that core can tell them what the place is all about, so it is easier to get them to buy into the club and what we are all about. It is hard to get that identity if you are making wholesale changes all the time. We have players who know the standards that are expected at this club and new players have to get to that level so they can then join in. All the new players have done that.

“As the squad has improved, it means that we are playing against top players every day in training. The strikers I am playing against are often better than what we are going to face at the weekend. If you are training against Ryan Christie, that keeps you focused!

“I have played with some good players, been involved in international squads, but I can’t emphasise enough how much I rate Ryan Christie. He is the most complete player I have seen. He is so good on the ball, anywhere on the park. He finds space. His feet are a joke. His technique, his passing, he can run all day, he has got a bit of fight in him and a nasty streak. He has goals in him as well. I have made no secret of how highly I rate him. When we are playing well he can take us to that next level.

“Training with players of that ability keeps you switched on. You can’t afford to have an off day. You have to give your all or you get found out. Everything we do gets analysed at training. We have the GPS and heart rate monitors on. Even if you are not catching the eye, they know how hard you are working or how fast you are running. They can compare the figures with those from a game and a lot of the time, we are working harder in training which is what we need to do if we are going to be up there challenging again this season.

“We have lost some big characters in the dressing room this summer, but some big ones have come in too. Big Joe Lewis is a big character. He was the only person who could call Jayden his wee side-kick. Greg Stewart has come in and been great. Ryan Christie is a bit more chirpy now he has been here a little while. Gary Mackay-Steven is getting his chirpiness back again!

“I still gave the same roommate though, Shinnie. I've only had two in my time here, him and Langers. Both have been very good. I got on great with Jamie when he was here. He is a great guy and a good roommate.

“The year Graeme arrived, both of us arrived late at pre-season and I have been his roommate ever since. We get on very well. We have only ever had one falling out in the room. We do a game on a Friday at training when you vote for the worst players. Shinnie’s team lost that morning and I voted for him out of badness really. He was not happy.

“That night, in the room, he changed beds. I usually sleep in the second bed and he will sleep in the first one. It has never been formally agreed on, but that is what we always do. When I went into the room that night he took the second bed and gave me the first bed. I said, “What are you playing at?” He was in a huff! I said, “Don't worry, I always score when I sleep in this bed”. That was the eve of the Ross County game, so when I scored he claimed that’s why he did that! He said he was just trying to help me out!

“I’m still talking about that goal to anyone and everyone that will listen. My only worry is that it happened so early in the season it will not make the award show! I’ve only once been nominated for goal of the season and that was a wicked deflection many years ago.

“But that whole episode highlights just how competitive Graeme is. He wants to win at everything. He is a contradiction. He is the nicest guy you could ever meet, my two boys love him. But then on the park, he is a mad man. He takes no nonsense from anyone. He is a great captain. He is an Aberdeen boy and this is his team. It’s a perfect fit. Thankfully he is a better captain than he is hairdresser, as I found out recently but the less said about that, the better”.

Mark would probably accept the compliment – and it’s meant as such – that he's an old school centre-half, but he recognises too that it's a job that changes every year.

“The art of defending is still basically the same as when I started. Your job is still to keep the ball out of the net. What has changed, if you look at the stats after each game, there is very little tackling happening in football. After every game, we have all the charts up in the dressing room with the detailed stats. Your defenders and centre midfielders are topping the numbers for interceptions with 20 odd per game each. Tackles are maybe just two or three. We do a top ten and there are maybe only four or five players who have made a tackle in the game.

“Before, there were a lot more tackles than in the game now. It is all about reading the game now so you can make those interceptions to break the play up instead of flying into tackles. But speak with our video analysis guys, they will have a better idea than me!

“When it is your job and you are involved in it every day and playing every week, you don’t really see the changes. It is not until you take a step back and look at things that you realise things have changed so much. For example, I did not realise that me and Andy are the only two players left at the club from when the manager arrived. The changing room still feels as if it the same, but there has actually been wholesale changes. I have played 230 odd games for this club which is great and it is a lot of games. But then you see that Andy has 400 odd! It pales in comparison! It is a very poor second!

“There is a lack of out and out defenders in the game though, I don't know why. I was reading an article the other day where someone was saying it was the curse of Messi and Ronaldo that all kids want to be a winger or a striker and be the match winner who gets all the publicity.

“Being a centre-half, you don’t really get the credit. People only talk about you when you are playing rubbish and making mistakes that lead to goals. To some extent it is the same for a goalkeeper, unless they have an outstanding game which Joe did the other week at Murrayfield, or they save a penalty. A central defender does not get remembered for heading the ball away. There’s no glamour in it!

“It is hard for young defenders to get a foot in the door too. When I was a youngster, once I was in the team, that was it, you were a first team player and playing week in week out. Once you are established that was you.

“Nowadays, with the need to win every game, managers will normally go for experience in that position. And even if you are winning comfortably in the game and the manager looks round at the bench to see what players he can throw on to get some game time, he is not normally going to put on a defender. When they do get on, it is hard to make an impression. Again, you are only going to be remembered for making a mistake. It is a hard position to break into.

“We have one of the best young defenders here in Scott McKenna. He has so much promise. He has the physical attributes needed as he is huge. He is a beast of a boy for his age. He is quick and he is good on the ball. He was just a little unfortunate that he has had good players playing in front of him but he showed last Sunday what he can do. He is a great lad as well. He has a very good head on his shoulders. He is good about the place, very well liked by all the staff.

“Getting good advice is so important, especially for young players. My dad was probably the biggest source of that. He coached me right up to U17 level. He will still watch games and tell me if I was rubbish! He is very honest with me. He will watch all my games back on RedTV and will ask me what I was doing there or what was I thinking when I did this or that!

“I did not really have any pros who took me under their wing, but when I broke into the Motherwell side, I played next to Stephen Craigan for a number of years and we had a good partnership. Then when I came up here, I was fortunate enough to play alongside Russell.

“I have also been lucky with the managers that I have had. My first manager when I came through at Motherwell was Terry Butcher, ex-England captain and one of the best centre-halves that country has ever produced. Also Maurice Malpas was his assistant who was one of the best full-backs for Scotland. Then Paul Hegarty came in as Mo’s assistant when he got the job, again another very good central defender.

“The only real ex-striker I had at Motherwell was Mark McGhee. He was good because he would say, “This is what I would do as a striker, how would you stop that?” or “I hated when defenders did that”. Then I had Craig and Archie at Motherwell who knew the game inside out. Both were big on defending, and now working with the gaffer and Doc as well who also place such importance on defending.  

“The game has changed in other ways too. I think it’s more of a squad game. In the days gone by, you would have your starting XI and that was it. Ten boys would play 36 or 37 games a season whilst a few others would make the odd substitute appearance. Now you are seeing a lot more boys playing 20 to 30 games or in some cases having 15 boys playing about 20 games.

“That is probably because the game is more demanding. The game is quicker. It is harder to be at the level needed to put in performances every week. Maybe tactics come more into it now as well. Especially at Aberdeen, the manager has the luxury of picking a team for each specific game and he has good enough players. Now we have a squad where if you make three or four changes, nobody is questioning it because the team is not any weaker.”

There are still plenty of unfulfilled ambitions that are there to drive Mark on in these next two years, not least on the international stage.

“I would like to be involved with Scotland again. It would mean so much to win that elusive first cap. I have to keep playing well and be a regular in the Aberdeen side first though. If we keep playing well and keep knocking on the door, guys will get a chance at international level sooner rather than later.

“Beyond that, as a team, if you ask anyone, they will tell you that we want to be playing at Hampden. We want to be competing for cups. That is so important for this club and why last Thursday was so disappointing. But for what we want to do this season, if we want to be up there challenging in the League, every game is massive. We have to be picking up three points pretty much every week. We want to keep being successful and we want to keep improving. Every game is huge.”