Stenhousemuir FC: Chairman Iain McMenemy says club is in a strong position despite current league position

Speaking to the Falkirk Herald, he thanked the Warriors support for being able to see the progress across different areas of the club without it being tainted by the poor run of recent results on the park.

“Our expectations are greater than they were a few years ago,” he said. “That is a natural step forward for us because we are improving all of these areas of the club and our budgets are increased now, so of course you expect greater success on the park.

“Overall, when you look at the season so far as a whole, it is fair to say we have underachieved. Our league position isn’t where we want to be, but with all of the other stuff in place, I feel really confident in our ability to turn it around.

“The fans aren’t happy with the results and that is very fair, I am not happy either and neither was Stephen Swift for that matter. That in football falls to the manager of course and we made the decision to part company with Stephen because we felt the results weren’t good enough.

“But actually, from what I gauge from our supporters as a club that is really, really close to our fans, I genuinely believe the mood is actually okay amongst the support. I think they recognise the club is in the strongest place it has probably ever been in.”

The club recently underwent a staffing restructure, with long-serving staff member Margaret Kilpatrick retiring after 22 years of service. Blair Cremin, who was the club’s chief executive officer, has moved on to a similar role within the club’s charity wing, while David Alexander has joined as the club’s new chief executive officer.

Talking through the restructure, McMenemy praised the new set-up, which he believes will allow the club to continue to grow.

He said: “Margaret gave us a fantastic handover that was really detailed in terms of an actually written in stone document and actually spending time with people at the club to go over things in person.

“Of course, even with that handover, we have someone who is irreplaceable in a sense. She did so much for the football club across different areas and she did so much that actually a lot of it was second nature to her and it didn’t seem like a job at all.

“When she moved on it was only then you realise things that were done before that aren’t simple or as easy as you probably thought they were. It has certainly been a big change for us.

“Blair moving over to our charity isn’t actually a big change for us, and it was something that made so much sense. It was a natural choice.

“We’ve been working on the charity for three years and our goal was to have our own registered charity by this point.

“He has been a massive part of making it happen and we felt his experience from other roles also made him the perfect person to take that area forward.

“Although it looks like an end point in terms of creating the charity being the goal, actually it is a starting point because the hard work really begins now in terms of making a difference in the way we want to.

“With that in mind, it was so important to hit the ground running and Blair has enabled us to do that. Our full community programme is now within the charity and that is key.

“With these movements, we had to plug a gap in the club that filled parts of Margaret’s and Blair’s roles, and that led us to bringing in David. He has a skillset that is really strong in terms of dealing with football administration and off the park matters too.

“I think we have a little bit of work to do and the goal is to bring in someone on a part-time basis to cover some other admin areas, but I think we are in a good place.

“We have spent so much time building our football department and I think it is really coming into place now.

“It is well resourced and our head of recruitment Martin Christie is working well with our team of scouts, while our head analyst Joseph McGlynn is doing a fantastic job with our team of analysts.”

McMenemy also gave an update to supporters on the hunt for a new manager after the departure of Swift earlier this month.

He said: "We are in really safe hands with Sean Crighton at the moment. We really want to make sure we get this process right and as such we are doing our due diligence properly, no matter how long it takes.

“Our football working group has been working away at it and we’ve had so many applicants for the role. The pleasing thing for me this time is the quality of applicants has been immense.

“We are starting the interview process next week and the goal is to have everything done and dusted within the next couple of weeks.

“Over the past year or so we have really put a lot of focus and effort into the analysis side of the game and that has been no different with regards to our process for finding a new manager that suits us.

“The football department has carried out a lot of due diligence in terms of really getting into the applicants previous roles and looking into their team selections, tactics, style of play and all of those sorts of things.

"Win ratios and these sorts of statistics are what you first look at, but we are trying to go a level beyond that.

“I think we would have had someone in place this week if it wasn’t the festive period and of course that pushes everything back.”