“We’re miles ahead,” McGlynn says. “The board reckoned, if we could get there in five years, to the Premiership, that would be an achievement.
“We managed to do it quicker. A lot of hard work. Some good recruitment. Some good personalities in the dressing room. Some togetherness. Punching above our weight most of the time.”
It was not instant success after he left then League 1 rivals Raith Rovers to take over the Bairns.
“We got close [to promotion] the first year and then got the invincible record the second year,” McGlynn recalls. “And, very quickly, one year in the Championship and here we are sitting sixth in the Premiership.
“It’s been a steady project all the way through. We’re delighted to be where we’re at. It’s been great.
“We’ll never have the biggest budget. We’re fan-owned. There’s no big money getting put in.
“It’s what is coming in. It takes a whole football club to come together and the fans. So it’s been very much a collective, everyone together. Because if the fans didn’t support us and back us then the finance wouldn’t be there.
“It was a rebuild. Make no mistake about it. That was how the board of directors put it to me. “
McGlynn, who also previously managed Heart of Midlothian and Livingston, admits that when he arrived at Falkirk Stadium and looked at what was required, he found it quite surprising.
“When we came in and saw what we actually had in pre-season, it was really quite scary,” he remembers. “I think the players that I brought in were even more scared than I was.”
McGlynn inherited a squad of 14 players, 13 of whom stayed for the following season, so there was little room for manoeuvre in the transfer market.
“There was only one with one or two more to move out the door and allow us more money because we were only left with what was left in the budget to try and bring players in,” he adds.
“So you try to bring the best you can in for the money you’ve got. You maybe don’t have the numbers, but you would concentrate on the quality and quality might mean physicality because I felt they were a very small team. They needed physicality put into the team.
“They needed to be robust, a bit more robust. It was never going to happen like that because there were so many things.
“The mentality was poor – and that doesn’t come overnight. You need to be winning games. Gaining confidence, gaining trust.”
