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The Dundee United Thread 22/23


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3 hours ago, MeadowArab said:

United have been featured in an article for The Athletic but I can't get past the pay wall. Would anyone here be kind enough to copy and paste the article? emoji8.png

www.theathletic.com/2505913/2021/04/10/dundee-united-the-team-trying-to-revolutionise-scottish-football-and-produce-champions-league-players/


Edit: Anyone with a subscription or a way to around the pay wall I mean

 

Dundee United, the team trying to revolutionise Scottish football and produce Champions League players

Jordan Campbell Apr 9, 2021comment-icon@2x.png 20 save-icon@2x.png

 

Spoiler

 

Saturday sees the Premiership club with the most minutes given to club-trained players this league season, Hamilton Academical, host the one who have given the most debuts to academy players this term, Dundee United.

Hamilton are renowned for their investment in youth, which has allowed them to punch above their weight in the top flight. Over 29 per cent of their game time is given to players who have come up through their academy.

The South Lanarkshire club was also the starting point of Dundee United academy director Andy Goldie’s coaching career in 2006, and he is now looking to reproduce that model at Tannadice. So far this season, 10 academy players have featured for Dundee United, with five of them making their debuts.

“It’s been great to see,” says Goldie, “but we’re never going to celebrate that until there is a sustainable impact with these players in the first team playing a style that has been developed throughout the academy and facilitating the business model with big clubs coming in and paying serious money for them.”

Goldie was appointed in February 2019 by sporting director Tony Asghar, two months after American owner Mark Ogren had taken control of the club. He compares the state of their academy at that time to the equivalent of a category three club in England and recalls how his first visit to a training session saw six or seven teams all crammed onto one pitch.

“There was a pile of soaking-wet bibs stuck in the middle of the pitch and barely any space,” he says. “The coach-to-player ratio wasn’t great either but that wasn’t down to anyone on the ground, it had just been allowed to fester over time and relied heavily on the reputation the club had gained through Ryan Gauld, John Souttar, Johnny Russell and Harry Souttar.

“The guys there before us were holding it together with very little resources.”

That was going to change under the new ownership as they set Goldie the task of achieving “elite status” — the top rating under the Scottish FA umbrella — within a year. The investment and level of detail in the overall plan saw that achieved but now the goal is to “produce Champions League players”.

How do you go about doing that? It is, after all, the holy grail for every club: wave after wave of homegrown talent, playing exciting football and winning. It is what Jim McLean did in the 1980s, when he won the league in 1983 and challenged Europe’s biggest clubs, but is it possible in a modern setting?

“That’s utopia at that point. I know people will read and say Dundee United can’t get back into Europe or produce Champions League players but I’m fed up with that mentality,” says Goldie. “I don’t know why we would put a ceiling on what any player or coach can achieve. We talk about the difference in finances with England but if we use that as an excuse we are going to be in the same position in 20 years’ time.

“The top teams produce players at 16 or 17 and several from the same age group. Here, it has only been one or two in each age group in the past but that doesn’t mean there can’t be an age group which drives the club forward massively. Until Scottish football changes and starts giving 16, 17 and 18-year-olds a sustainable opportunity at first-team level, we’re never going to bridge that gap.”

United have devised an identity based on the letters in the club’s nickname “The Arabs” — aggressive, relentless, awareness and bravery — and have various sequences of trigger words for the stages of attacking and defending that form the language used in the academy.

Goldie says there is a conscious effort not to make the game “overstructured” by sticking to one formation. Rather, the aim is to produce players who can adapt to any situation.

“A lot of my ideas developed over the last 15 years came from what I felt I lacked at that point, moving into academy football,” says Goldie. “I never really resonated with any of the sessions. It was all activity but nothing specialised towards myself. I was always one of the taller boys throughout the age groups but couldn’t head the ball. No one ever took me aside to work on it.

“Working at the Scottish FA really opened my eyes to it and it’s something I feel more clubs should do. The appointment of (individual performance coach) Andy Steeves is crucial as we need someone to be working on who they are, not what we see them as. In Scotland, we have too many players who are the version of a player in the coach’s mind, therefore we churn out robotic players.

“There has to be constant innovation, investment, seeking out best practice, or you’re going to fall behind and produce a player or coach who isn’t ready for that version of the game.

“One of the bug-bears for me in Scottish football is when we copy what the Netherlands do, or Spain or Germany. By the time we get that up and running you’re 10 years behind, so let’s create something that’s unique to us and celebrates our identity as a nation or a club. Let’s be frontrunners, rather than always catching up.”

 

He has recruited individuals he believes share his thirst for knowledge, and the club appointed Dr Dan Parnell as head of research to aid their goal of being aware of the latest thinking.

That open-mindedness to new ideas led to them last month becoming members of the International Youth Methodological Board, a project set up by Italian top-flight side Parma which sees an exclusive network of clubs share know-how and, post-pandemic, embark on club visits and test-games.

Dundee United’s invitation came about through their connections with Croatian side Hajduk Split and, after a session to assess how they engaged and interacted in the discussions, they were made full members alongside France’s Marseille, German side RB Leipzig, Maribor of Slovenia, Portuguese club Braga, Spain’s Villarreal and Philadelphia Union of Major League Soccer.

b80c3617-4227-45b0-8d4e-2e8055e705ec.jpg

“Scottish football has moved dramatically over the last five to 10 years but if we just learn and compare ourselves to what is happening in Scotland, at the very best we’re only ever going to be the best in Scotland,” he adds. “We’ve got a long way to go to be the best in Scotland as there is a lot of good work going on at other clubs and we’re still in our infancy, but the quality of conversation and the people we’re learning from can only accelerate that.”

Goldie has assembled a team of coaches he believes will evolve the work they do while also pursuing their ambitions of moving into the senior game.

“Tony (Asghar, the sporting director) is really big on that, as he sees one of our academy staff becoming a first-team manager in the future. If you look at the World Cup and Champions League-winning coaches, most of them have been promoted from within.

“Ralf Rangnick was very big on the fact that, until 2000, there weren’t many German coaches driving the tactical aspect of the game but now you’ve got (Jurgen) Klopp, (Thomas) Tuchel, (Hansi) Flick, (Julian) Nagelsmann and others. They’ve all been developed within the system with a clear methodology and the clubs have really invested in them.

“We are constantly assessing them and we have them presenting to each other. We have just created a five-stage process formulating what we’ve been building the last two years. We hope that will allow us to track the progress of our coaches more accurately.”

One of the first decisions Goldie made was not to appoint a traditional head of youth. Instead, Tam Courts was named head of tactical performance to make sure all coaches at all levels are working to the same ideas. He joined from non-League Kelty Hearts, where he won four trophies in five years.

He had been in advanced discussions with Premier League sides West Ham and Sheffield United and Dutch club NAC Breda about a “strategic proposition for the football industry”. It would have used his experience as a recruitment consultant, but his eldest child had just started high school and the conversations he was having with Goldie excited him.

The under-18s started their league season on Friday against their Hibernian counterparts. The club took the decision not to furlough their youth players during the pandemic and head of professional phase Adam Asghar, Tony’s son, believes his players are already creating a “live case study” for the future years to learn from.

The training revolves around the six Rs (receives, regains, releases, retains, runs, risks) which are aimed at producing technically proficient players who can “outplay their opponents one v one”.

Dundee United have also placed a heavy emphasis on individual performance plans, which run from under-11s level to under-16s and were rolled out in the last six months.

After several up-and-coming players, including 17-year-old Lewis Neilson and Logan Chalmers, now 21, featured regularly early in the season, the number of youngsters gradually decreased as manager Micky Mellon found himself needing results to ensure a comfortable finish to the season. Now in eighth place heading into the Premiership’s post-split fixtures, there may be more opportunity to introduce some teenagers back into the fold but what is the key to ensuring this happens in the years to come?

“An aligned style with the first-team, first of all,” says Adam Asghar. “That would give the manager an idea of how they can accommodate players while also managing their potential shortcomings. A 16-year-old centre-back we are going to develop will be able to carry the ball from the back, break lines with his passing. But he’s not going to have the survival skills of dominating physically, as academy level just doesn’t offer that experience.”

It may mean partnership clubs, something they are discussing at the moment while several of their players gain experience on loan in the Scottish third tier. Neilson and fellow 17-year-old Kai Fotheringham moved on loan to Falkirk last month. Ross Graham, 20, is with Cove Rangers, Kieran Freeman, 21, is at Peterhead and 17-year-old Chris Mochrie, perhaps the biggest talent of the lot, is at Montrose.

Ten players have featured this season, but Courts believes it is realistic for over half the Dundee United team in five years’ time to have come from their academy.

“We need to think strategically, but also think long-term,” he says. “We need to make less reactive, subjective decisions, as from 18 to 23 that is where the vacuum exists and I think that is largely because we are allowing players to drift out of the game. No one is taking control of that player’s development, road-mapping it, making sure they can see the pathway ahead of them.

‘The right people in the right conversations’ is a phrase Courts harks back to regularly. While Dundee United have the systems and methods in place that they believe will help them produce top players, it’s still the personal bonds that are key to making the step up.

“We are quite deliberate in who we make captain and who we have conversations with,” says Adam Asghar. “Give them the right autonomy and accountability and see if they can handle it. Once they do, our job becomes easier as that develops leadership, so it becomes a constant process of developing new leaders.”

The idea of the culture underpinning the academy and helping to naturally replenish the number of leaders also extends to the way their academy teams play.

“What we find is that players create patterns,” he says. “When we moved Lewis Neilson back to centre-back from midfield, he started creating space by driving forwards and others filling the space. He created three or four patterns we use to this day. When Lewis moved up, (16-year-old) Kerr Smith then came in as a similar profile and he could go and deploy the patterns Lewis created.

“Usually you’d hear, ‘These are our patterns of play, go and do them’, but that doesn’t really empower the players enough for us.”

 

Andy Payne works with the under-14s but has recently taken over as head of performance coaching.

He oversees the training of coaches to ensure that they are on the path to achieving their goals, giving them their own individual plans too: “Instead of a coach saying they want to be a manager in 10 years’ time and not doing anything about it, we make sure they are documenting their work, producing a game model, a strategy for taking over a club. They’ll never be ready for that opportunity if they don’t, so if they take these steps they might get closer to it. It’s all about timing and the opportunity.

“There is probably a stigma in Scotland of ‘the laptop coach’ you get, but we do need to create a culture change. There are a lot of good players here too, but they need opportunity to go to the next level.”

Players complete a form outlining their strengths, weaknesses and an area to focus on as well as a role model segment, where the players choose an elite player to analyse.

“Individualised training is now a staple diet of our programme,” says Payne. “Each player has one and it’s to identify what their strengths are, rather than looking at their weaknesses. It’s about trying to raise their self-awareness of who they are and what makes them tick — why we signed them, effectively.

“It puts a bit of accountability on the players too. Before, you could be a striker and working in a defensive session never working on honing your craft of actually being a goalscorer and making runs off the ball. You are never going to produce a team of players that will be your first team, it will be individuals here or there, so we need to make sure they have that individual focus in analysis and in sessions.

“No same player goes through the system twice so we need to tailor our programme to be specific to them. If they are a creative one v one risk-taker, we have to promote that and find ways which give them the opportunity to do that.

“We actually let the players create their own sessions, so in a group session, we will separate 20 minutes for them to work on these plans. It gives them that accountability.”

Scotland is renowned for its people possessing a gallus streak, but it is also a nation in which people, especially younger ones, can often be uncomfortable speaking about themselves, preferring to be self-deprecating than self-aggrandising.

These plans are an attempt to give them a “voice” and normalise the players taking control of their own game, says Payne, while education and welfare officer Michael McPake arranges for the players to deliver presentations about themselves to improve their communication and social skills.

“One of the best ways to develop leaders is, at the earliest age, to get them to articulate their thoughts on the game,” says Courts. “What excites them? ‘When you’re at your best, what are you doing?’ ‘What do you need around you to make you feel good?’ ‘Who do you like watching?’

“The more players who can articulate that, fast forward 10 years and what we’ll have are players who expect managers to be clear with them about what their expectations are and engage in good football chat. We still operate in football where the managers in certain clubs act in an ivory tower and players don’t have things explained to them: why they are dropped, what they need to do to improve.

“What we are trying to do is create a modern player who has a prerequisite need and demand for that. The more we can promote and provoke thinking within our young players, the more they will articulate and stimulate debate.”

The conveyor belt is not yet running at full speed but there are several talents who have had a taste now and look set for more.

The years to come will tell whether Dundee United are capable of producing Champions League-level players but, if they don’t, it won’t be for the want of trying.

 

 

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Any Arabs of a certain vintage recognise this? My mum was having a loft clearout earlier and gave me a box of Utd memorabilia from the 80s, newspaper articles after the league win etc and UEFA Cup stuff. She was at the final with my dad but doesn't recall the details of this - looks like a match day hospitality menu.

Topside of beef 72p! 

20210410_155157.thumb.jpg.c3a511489b7ad46c60e81a25eb5140d6.jpg

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Well, from the outside all the grand plans for the Academy are just chat just now but it does at least show that the people involved are taking it seriously and trying to move forward with a purpose. That's probably half the battle. Time will tell whether it goes anywhere significant but at least the chat is promising.

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9 minutes ago, Zetterlund said:

Any Arabs of a certain vintage recognise this? My mum was having a loft clearout earlier and gave me a box of Utd memorabilia from the 80s, newspaper articles after the league win etc and UEFA Cup stuff. She was at the final with my dad but doesn't recall the details of this - looks like a match day hospitality menu.

Topside of beef 72p! 

20210410_155157.thumb.jpg.c3a511489b7ad46c60e81a25eb5140d6.jpg

That's a brilliant idea.

All hospitality menus should be based on the last 5 games in that competition.

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1 hour ago, Zetterlund said:

What's the traditional chef's special in Hamilton?

This is probably now a fairly niche joke, but lam Brogan josh...

Edited by RandomGuy.
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1 hour ago, Pull My Strings said:

Well, from the outside all the grand plans for the Academy are just chat just now but it does at least show that the people involved are taking it seriously and trying to move forward with a purpose. That's probably half the battle. Time will tell whether it goes anywhere significant but at least the chat is promising.

I’m sure they’re doing their best, but it’s all a bit - check me out, everything was crap till I turned up!

Not really buying it. You’d think we’d never produced any decent youth players till now!

Levein transformed the setup over a decade ago creating the school partnership system, putting a bigger focus on technique and moving to St Andrews. 
 

 

Edited by ArabFC
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2 hours ago, Pull My Strings said:

Well, from the outside all the grand plans for the Academy are just chat just now but it does at least show that the people involved are taking it seriously and trying to move forward with a purpose. That's probably half the battle. Time will tell whether it goes anywhere significant but at least the chat is promising.

Before I posted that I actually checked the thread to see if there was any chat on it.

Aside from a general interest in how teams are developing youth, Dundee United's development has always held an interest for the past decade or so. 

One of my mates brothers was involved in the Aberdeen youth development. He told me the best two teams in the country were Utd and Queens Park. This was pre Gauld, Souttar etc. Those two clubs were the two examples for everyone to follow.

United didn't quite make the money they thought they would and Queens were regularly losing players to the big two (along with others, Aberdeen taking a few) so it's interesting to read the guy say you won't be resting on your laurels. What worked for the previous 'golden generation' might not work going forward.

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55 minutes ago, ArabFC said:

I’m sure they’re doing their best, but it’s all a bit - check me out, everything was crap till I turned up!

Not really buying it. You’d think we’d never produced any decent youth players till now!

Levein transformed the setup over a decade ago creating the school partnership system, putting a bigger focus on technique and moving to St Andrews. 
 

 

It seems pretty clear from reading the article that whatever Craig Levein had built at United no longer existed by the time Andy Goldie arrived at Tannadice so I'm not sure what relevance that has.

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Dundee United, the team trying to revolutionise Scottish football and produce Champions League players
Jordan Campbell Apr 9, 2021comment-icon@2x.png&key=5c315678ea0ccc197e2900a21fbe1a4fa167b5004bbb93117dbbff58b265e1d2 20 save-icon@2x.png&key=4db66d0d4b0b7dbf03996fa42e5a5619385e103456d83b67f91cb52641d8a161  
Spoiler

 
Saturday sees the Premiership club with the most minutes given to club-trained players this league season, Hamilton Academical, host the one who have given the most debuts to academy players this term, Dundee United.
Hamilton are renowned for their investment in youth, which has allowed them to punch above their weight in the top flight. Over 29 per cent of their game time is given to players who have come up through their academy.
The South Lanarkshire club was also the starting point of Dundee United academy director Andy Goldie’s coaching career in 2006, and he is now looking to reproduce that model at Tannadice. So far this season, 10 academy players have featured for Dundee United, with five of them making their debuts.
“It’s been great to see,” says Goldie, “but we’re never going to celebrate that until there is a sustainable impact with these players in the first team playing a style that has been developed throughout the academy and facilitating the business model with big clubs coming in and paying serious money for them.”
Goldie was appointed in February 2019 by sporting director Tony Asghar, two months after American owner Mark Ogren had taken control of the club. He compares the state of their academy at that time to the equivalent of a category three club in England and recalls how his first visit to a training session saw six or seven teams all crammed onto one pitch.
“There was a pile of soaking-wet bibs stuck in the middle of the pitch and barely any space,” he says. “The coach-to-player ratio wasn’t great either but that wasn’t down to anyone on the ground, it had just been allowed to fester over time and relied heavily on the reputation the club had gained through Ryan Gauld, John Souttar, Johnny Russell and Harry Souttar.
“The guys there before us were holding it together with very little resources.”
That was going to change under the new ownership as they set Goldie the task of achieving “elite status” — the top rating under the Scottish FA umbrella — within a year. The investment and level of detail in the overall plan saw that achieved but now the goal is to “produce Champions League players”.
How do you go about doing that? It is, after all, the holy grail for every club: wave after wave of homegrown talent, playing exciting football and winning. It is what Jim McLean did in the 1980s, when he won the league in 1983 and challenged Europe’s biggest clubs, but is it possible in a modern setting?
“That’s utopia at that point. I know people will read and say Dundee United can’t get back into Europe or produce Champions League players but I’m fed up with that mentality,” says Goldie. “I don’t know why we would put a ceiling on what any player or coach can achieve. We talk about the difference in finances with England but if we use that as an excuse we are going to be in the same position in 20 years’ time.
“The top teams produce players at 16 or 17 and several from the same age group. Here, it has only been one or two in each age group in the past but that doesn’t mean there can’t be an age group which drives the club forward massively. Until Scottish football changes and starts giving 16, 17 and 18-year-olds a sustainable opportunity at first-team level, we’re never going to bridge that gap.”
United have devised an identity based on the letters in the club’s nickname “The Arabs” — aggressive, relentless, awareness and bravery — and have various sequences of trigger words for the stages of attacking and defending that form the language used in the academy.
Goldie says there is a conscious effort not to make the game “overstructured” by sticking to one formation. Rather, the aim is to produce players who can adapt to any situation.
“A lot of my ideas developed over the last 15 years came from what I felt I lacked at that point, moving into academy football,” says Goldie. “I never really resonated with any of the sessions. It was all activity but nothing specialised towards myself. I was always one of the taller boys throughout the age groups but couldn’t head the ball. No one ever took me aside to work on it.
“Working at the Scottish FA really opened my eyes to it and it’s something I feel more clubs should do. The appointment of (individual performance coach) Andy Steeves is crucial as we need someone to be working on who they are, not what we see them as. In Scotland, we have too many players who are the version of a player in the coach’s mind, therefore we churn out robotic players.
“There has to be constant innovation, investment, seeking out best practice, or you’re going to fall behind and produce a player or coach who isn’t ready for that version of the game.
“One of the bug-bears for me in Scottish football is when we copy what the Netherlands do, or Spain or Germany. By the time we get that up and running you’re 10 years behind, so let’s create something that’s unique to us and celebrates our identity as a nation or a club. Let’s be frontrunners, rather than always catching up.”
 

He has recruited individuals he believes share his thirst for knowledge, and the club appointed Dr Dan Parnell as head of research to aid their goal of being aware of the latest thinking.

That open-mindedness to new ideas led to them last month becoming members of the International Youth Methodological Board, a project set up by Italian top-flight side Parma which sees an exclusive network of clubs share know-how and, post-pandemic, embark on club visits and test-games.

Dundee United’s invitation came about through their connections with Croatian side Hajduk Split and, after a session to assess how they engaged and interacted in the discussions, they were made full members alongside France’s Marseille, German side RB Leipzig, Maribor of Slovenia, Portuguese club Braga, Spain’s Villarreal and Philadelphia Union of Major League Soccer.

b80c3617-4227-45b0-8d4e-2e8055e705ec.jpg&key=55a456effba726fc09c1e72ffe9c59b27f9669993583e0dfb3d22effe0038d0e

“Scottish football has moved dramatically over the last five to 10 years but if we just learn and compare ourselves to what is happening in Scotland, at the very best we’re only ever going to be the best in Scotland,” he adds. “We’ve got a long way to go to be the best in Scotland as there is a lot of good work going on at other clubs and we’re still in our infancy, but the quality of conversation and the people we’re learning from can only accelerate that.”

Goldie has assembled a team of coaches he believes will evolve the work they do while also pursuing their ambitions of moving into the senior game.

“Tony (Asghar, the sporting director) is really big on that, as he sees one of our academy staff becoming a first-team manager in the future. If you look at the World Cup and Champions League-winning coaches, most of them have been promoted from within.

“Ralf Rangnick was very big on the fact that, until 2000, there weren’t many German coaches driving the tactical aspect of the game but now you’ve got (Jurgen) Klopp, (Thomas) Tuchel, (Hansi) Flick, (Julian) Nagelsmann and others. They’ve all been developed within the system with a clear methodology and the clubs have really invested in them.

“We are constantly assessing them and we have them presenting to each other. We have just created a five-stage process formulating what we’ve been building the last two years. We hope that will allow us to track the progress of our coaches more accurately.”

One of the first decisions Goldie made was not to appoint a traditional head of youth. Instead, Tam Courts was named head of tactical performance to make sure all coaches at all levels are working to the same ideas. He joined from non-League Kelty Hearts, where he won four trophies in five years.

He had been in advanced discussions with Premier League sides West Ham and Sheffield United and Dutch club NAC Breda about a “strategic proposition for the football industry”. It would have used his experience as a recruitment consultant, but his eldest child had just started high school and the conversations he was having with Goldie excited him.

The under-18s started their league season on Friday against their Hibernian counterparts. The club took the decision not to furlough their youth players during the pandemic and head of professional phase Adam Asghar, Tony’s son, believes his players are already creating a “live case study” for the future years to learn from.

The training revolves around the six Rs (receives, regains, releases, retains, runs, risks) which are aimed at producing technically proficient players who can “outplay their opponents one v one”.

Dundee United have also placed a heavy emphasis on individual performance plans, which run from under-11s level to under-16s and were rolled out in the last six months.

After several up-and-coming players, including 17-year-old Lewis Neilson and Logan Chalmers, now 21, featured regularly early in the season, the number of youngsters gradually decreased as manager Micky Mellon found himself needing results to ensure a comfortable finish to the season. Now in eighth place heading into the Premiership’s post-split fixtures, there may be more opportunity to introduce some teenagers back into the fold but what is the key to ensuring this happens in the years to come?

“An aligned style with the first-team, first of all,” says Adam Asghar. “That would give the manager an idea of how they can accommodate players while also managing their potential shortcomings. A 16-year-old centre-back we are going to develop will be able to carry the ball from the back, break lines with his passing. But he’s not going to have the survival skills of dominating physically, as academy level just doesn’t offer that experience.”

It may mean partnership clubs, something they are discussing at the moment while several of their players gain experience on loan in the Scottish third tier. Neilson and fellow 17-year-old Kai Fotheringham moved on loan to Falkirk last month. Ross Graham, 20, is with Cove Rangers, Kieran Freeman, 21, is at Peterhead and 17-year-old Chris Mochrie, perhaps the biggest talent of the lot, is at Montrose.

Ten players have featured this season, but Courts believes it is realistic for over half the Dundee United team in five years’ time to have come from their academy.

“We need to think strategically, but also think long-term,” he says. “We need to make less reactive, subjective decisions, as from 18 to 23 that is where the vacuum exists and I think that is largely because we are allowing players to drift out of the game. No one is taking control of that player’s development, road-mapping it, making sure they can see the pathway ahead of them.

‘The right people in the right conversations’ is a phrase Courts harks back to regularly. While Dundee United have the systems and methods in place that they believe will help them produce top players, it’s still the personal bonds that are key to making the step up.

“We are quite deliberate in who we make captain and who we have conversations with,” says Adam Asghar. “Give them the right autonomy and accountability and see if they can handle it. Once they do, our job becomes easier as that develops leadership, so it becomes a constant process of developing new leaders.”

The idea of the culture underpinning the academy and helping to naturally replenish the number of leaders also extends to the way their academy teams play.

“What we find is that players create patterns,” he says. “When we moved Lewis Neilson back to centre-back from midfield, he started creating space by driving forwards and others filling the space. He created three or four patterns we use to this day. When Lewis moved up, (16-year-old) Kerr Smith then came in as a similar profile and he could go and deploy the patterns Lewis created.

“Usually you’d hear, ‘These are our patterns of play, go and do them’, but that doesn’t really empower the players enough for us.”

 

Andy Payne works with the under-14s but has recently taken over as head of performance coaching.

He oversees the training of coaches to ensure that they are on the path to achieving their goals, giving them their own individual plans too: “Instead of a coach saying they want to be a manager in 10 years’ time and not doing anything about it, we make sure they are documenting their work, producing a game model, a strategy for taking over a club. They’ll never be ready for that opportunity if they don’t, so if they take these steps they might get closer to it. It’s all about timing and the opportunity.

“There is probably a stigma in Scotland of ‘the laptop coach’ you get, but we do need to create a culture change. There are a lot of good players here too, but they need opportunity to go to the next level.”

Players complete a form outlining their strengths, weaknesses and an area to focus on as well as a role model segment, where the players choose an elite player to analyse.

“Individualised training is now a staple diet of our programme,” says Payne. “Each player has one and it’s to identify what their strengths are, rather than looking at their weaknesses. It’s about trying to raise their self-awareness of who they are and what makes them tick — why we signed them, effectively.

“It puts a bit of accountability on the players too. Before, you could be a striker and working in a defensive session never working on honing your craft of actually being a goalscorer and making runs off the ball. You are never going to produce a team of players that will be your first team, it will be individuals here or there, so we need to make sure they have that individual focus in analysis and in sessions.

“No same player goes through the system twice so we need to tailor our programme to be specific to them. If they are a creative one v one risk-taker, we have to promote that and find ways which give them the opportunity to do that.

“We actually let the players create their own sessions, so in a group session, we will separate 20 minutes for them to work on these plans. It gives them that accountability.”

Scotland is renowned for its people possessing a gallus streak, but it is also a nation in which people, especially younger ones, can often be uncomfortable speaking about themselves, preferring to be self-deprecating than self-aggrandising.

These plans are an attempt to give them a “voice” and normalise the players taking control of their own game, says Payne, while education and welfare officer Michael McPake arranges for the players to deliver presentations about themselves to improve their communication and social skills.

“One of the best ways to develop leaders is, at the earliest age, to get them to articulate their thoughts on the game,” says Courts. “What excites them? ‘When you’re at your best, what are you doing?’ ‘What do you need around you to make you feel good?’ ‘Who do you like watching?’

“The more players who can articulate that, fast forward 10 years and what we’ll have are players who expect managers to be clear with them about what their expectations are and engage in good football chat. We still operate in football where the managers in certain clubs act in an ivory tower and players don’t have things explained to them: why they are dropped, what they need to do to improve.

“What we are trying to do is create a modern player who has a prerequisite need and demand for that. The more we can promote and provoke thinking within our young players, the more they will articulate and stimulate debate.”

The conveyor belt is not yet running at full speed but there are several talents who have had a taste now and look set for more.

The years to come will tell whether Dundee United are capable of producing Champions League-level players but, if they don’t, it won’t be for the want of trying.

 

 

Thank you very much [emoji8][emoji182]
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8 hours ago, Accent-Unknown said:

It seems pretty clear from reading the article that whatever Craig Levein had built at United no longer existed by the time Andy Goldie arrived at Tannadice so I'm not sure what relevance that has.

I'd heard a while ago the structure Levein put in went out the window when Steve Campbell got punted after falling out with McNaFortune.

Edited by mishtergrolsch
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On 09/04/2021 at 12:40, ArabFC said:

As for Pawlett - I wouldn't be against keeping him if he took a HUGE pay cut. A wage in line with what someone who was on the bench most weeks would expect, cos that's his level now.

I'm with you on this - we could do a lot worse than Pawlett as a squad member (if he is happy to take a proportionate wage cut).  He undoubtedly has some quality, but we have been paying him way too much (if the rumours are true that he is as well paid as Shankland...) and haven't seen his qualities nearly enough to justify the wage he came in on.

On 09/04/2021 at 14:57, Aladdin said:

Would much rather see Mochrie or another youngster fill the gap left by Pawlett if we couldnt get anyone better in.

I would love us to give even more minutes to youngsters, but there is definitely a place for experience - and Pawlett seems pretty resilient (especially if he has ever read this thread...), so likely a good option alongside the kids in the squad.

18 hours ago, Mr. Alli said:

Is there any indication what's happening with these debts yet? 

Does anyone know who we are actually indebted to?  The losses from the Ogren era have been eye-watering - but surely no banks are actually lending to football teams these days!?

13 hours ago, Mark Connolly said:

Dundee United will be a Premiership team next season.

We had one goal at the start of the season - and have achieved it with 4 games to go.  Well done Micky Mellon.  The football on show has, at times, been horrendous to watch (no more so that the middle 70 minutes yesterday...) but a goal is a goal, and he deserves a lot of credit for gaining so many points from some very average players.

12 hours ago, bairn88 said:

Neilson played with the cigars out since joining us. Could be a starter for you next season and a hefty transfer fee down the line 

Good to hear.  No doubt that he has serious potential; here's hoping we can convince him not to go to the English Championship in the summer... 

11 hours ago, Merkland Red said:

 

Thank you for that! 

I liked the following passage:

Dundee United’s invitation came about through their connections with Croatian side Hajduk Split and, after a session to assess how they engaged and interacted in the discussions, they were made full members alongside France’s Marseille, German side RB Leipzig, Maribor of Slovenia, Portuguese club Braga, Spain’s Villarreal and Philadelphia Union of Major League Soccer...

I had no idea we were so well connected!

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Guest Peter LaFleur

Neilson is an absolute Rolls Royce of a pler. Unbelievable he is only 17. It’s a bit like watching Van Dijk with Celtic having Neilson in League 1. Defends at ease then goes on a mazy run bodying players out the way. Hopefully he is ready for the Premiership next season for you boys.

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9 minutes ago, Peter LaFleur said:

Neilson is an absolute Rolls Royce of a pler. Unbelievable he is only 17. It’s a bit like watching Van Dijk with Celtic having Neilson in League 1. Defends at ease then goes on a mazy run bodying players out the way. Hopefully he is ready for the Premiership next season for you boys.

Good to hear he's doing well. It will be interesting to see if he's in the first team plans next season. I hope so.

If not it would be an idea to loan him back out to you again, for the first half of the season at least, to keep playing first team games at a higher level. 

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