Let’s have a bit of fun – Neil Warnock out to ‘put smiles on faces’ at Aberdeen

New Aberdeen manager Neil Warnock vowed to have a “little bit of fun” and targeted cup glory after achieving a long-held ambition of working in Scotland.

The 75-year-old revealed he had rejected more lucrative recent offers but seized the opportunity to move to the cinch Premiership in an interim role until the end of the season.

Aberdeen will take time to make a long-term appointment after Barry Robson became the fourth manager in successive seasons to lose his job.

Warnock came out of retirement 12 months ago to lead Huddersfield to Sky Bet Championship safety in a similar role.

The former QPR, Leeds and Sheffield United manager has previously applied for the Aberdeen role and come close to the Hearts job and claimed he turned down an offer from current Dons chief executive Alan Burrows when he was in the same position at Motherwell.

“It’s been a long time,” he said. “I have always wanted to manage up here. I’ve got a place at Dunoon and my club’s Greenock Morton. I’ve got bricks there with the family name on, so I have always enjoyed going to watch a game there.

“When I spoke to (chairman) Dave Cormack and Alan it just seemed the right thing to do.

“It gives them a little bit of time to find the right manager that’s going to take the club forward and also, as I said to them, let’s have a little bit of fun between now and the end of the season as well. I like to put smiles on people’s faces.

“I applied for the job once many years ago and I never even got a reply. I felt let down at the time and I used that a little bit to motivate myself – I’ll show them what they’re missing. I managed to get promotion the following year.”

Warnock added: “It’s not for the money. I’ve had some good offers in the last six to eight weeks. I’d like to have a go in this league and I’d like to have a go at a club like this.

“I got a good feeling about here. In the last couple of weeks I could have got two or three times my salary that I’m on here, in England, but it’s not the salary now. You don’t come back at my age unless it ticks the boxes.

“We play Hibernian shortly, (managed by) Nick Montgomery, one of my young lads (he played under Warnock at Sheffield United), there’s all sorts of things. I nearly got the Hearts job once and they gave it some bloke from Latvia or somewhere, so that was a bit of an insult.

“There’s a lot to play for league-wise and I’d like to win a cup. I’ve not won a cup. I got to semi-finals a couple of times and got done by referees, but we’ll not go into that.

“The only pressure is I want to win. I can’t see me getting sacked in four months. So I have got to try and enjoy it and try and make the fans enjoy it.”

Aberdeen are the 17th club Warnock has taken charge of and he claims not much has changed since he got his break with Gainsborough Trinity in the Northern Premier League in 1981.

“I get called a dinosaur and all sorts of names, some I can’t repeat, but in my career as a football manager, nothing has changed in the fact that to be successful, 90-95 per cent is man-management,” said Warnock, who has achieved eight promotions with seven different clubs.

Warnock’s first game is at Ibrox on Tuesday against a Rangers side who could go top of the league.

“I was going to start next week, but the lure of taking over for a game like that is too good really,” said the Yorkshireman, who has brought in Ronnie Jepson as assistant manager to work alongside first-team coach Peter Leven.

“If we get battered, it’s Peter’s fault. If we do well, then I’m very influential on the result.”