With Mark McGhee last week accepting the role as manager of a club where a small section of supporters once sang songs about him so vile they would likely be deemed in poor taste by Frankie Boyle, it’s safe to say that he probably doesn’t put too much stock in the opinions of any club’s lunatic fringe.

As McGhee prepares to return to Pittodrie today as manager of Motherwell once again, he knows that a section of the home faithful are likely to be of a mind to give him similar treatment to that he received from a disgruntled section of the Motherwell support at the same venue in 2010 as Aberdeen boss.

If he was daunted by the prospect though, then he has a fine face for poker.

“You know, I don’t care,” he said.

“I’m proud of my record as a player at Aberdeen. I didn’t have a good time there as a manager.

“Sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me. So onwards and upwards.

“I’m going there as Motherwell manager and I’ll shut my ears to it, if people choose to take that attitude.

“I’ve been back with Scotland anyway. It’s fine.

“I’m going back with Motherwell, I’m with Motherwell now.

”Aberdeen have done brilliantly. I worked in Bristol at the same time as Derek McInnes and I’ve got a lot of time for him.

“I think he’s done a great job and they’ll be a very, very difficult team for us to play against, regardless of their recent results.

“Eventually they will stop losing. We’ve got to guard against us being the team they stop losing against.”

McGhee says that he has had a productive first full week in charge of the Fir Park club, as he tries to produce a similar turnaround to the one he achieved during his first spell in charge.

“We’ve worked hard this week,” he said.

“I’ve got to be careful not to impart too much information and make too much change, too quickly.

“We’ve been trying to get a balance between moving things along and not over-doing it.

“There has certainly been a willingness, a co-operation and everything you would hope for. Tomorrow will give us a better sign of how it’s going.

“They know change is needed, but the defensive record is the fourth best in the league, it’s far from embarrassing. So there’s really not a lot you can do with that.

“We do have to find a way of scoring more goals, so that’s what we’ll be working on – while maintaining that defensive record.

“If we can stay fourth in the league on defence and be the fourth best scorers, that will be us in business and we’ll move up the league.

“So we want a balance. We don’t want to be a team who suddenly start losing goals while trying to score more.

“We have to stay difficult to beat – but give ourselves a chance of punching back.

“Confidence hasn’t been an issue, not at all. That even showed last week.

“We had a difficult time in the first half, tactically. But once we sorted that out they were good, solid and gave themselves a chance of getting back into the game.

“I think, had they been lacking in any confidence, they wouldn’t have been able to do that – and they would have gone on to lose by more than one goal.

“So there’s no lack of belief. They just need a way of playing that allows them to bring the best out of themselves and that displays a lot of what I see in training.

“There have been things happening this week in training, things in the second half of the Celtic match, too, that I was quite excited and optimistic about.

“So we’ve got to now take that on to the field, give them a way of reproducing that, exploring that and developing that so that these boys can fulfil their potential.”

One man who says he is already reaping the rewards of McGhee’s influence, is right-back Josh Law.

“We’ve worked really hard this week with a few double sessions, and I feel as if we’re really getting somewhere now,” Law said.

“There’s been quite a big difference, as there is when any new manager comes in.

“We’ve all enjoyed it and we’re already getting to know what he wants. Hopefully we can start by getting some points against Aberdeen.

“He wants to simplify things and get us back to basics. He doesn’t want to overload us with information, but he’s got over what you could call basic, but key points.

“It’s important to get those in your head again and get to know your role on the pitch again, and how our game-plan is going to be. We’ve worked hard on that.”