telling his new players. “I am not here to run the bollocks off you, or shout and bawl. We’re here to help one another,” was one. “All the talk of managers coming and going, that’s finished,” was another. Brewster’s mantra is a simple one. Get fit. Get points.
He will not look too far ahead, or back too much either. Eddie Thompson, his chairman, feels United should be in the top half of the Premierleague after a personal investment fast approaching £4m. “His thoughts are of the top six, with the money he’s spent, but I said to him, ‘Money doesn’t guarantee you anything’. Football was summed up the other week when Clyde played Celtic. There are no guarantees in life, it ’s how much you want things.” In the rearview mirror, meanwhile, are United’s past glories, including the 1994 Scottish Cup final victory over Rangers in which Brewster scored the winner. His father is a United fan, as are several of his closest friends and there will be plenty of free advice floating around. “Everybody is excited because I am an ex-Dundee United player,” he adds, “but I am focused on what I have to do.”
Brewster’s United career lasted three seasons from 1993 to 1996. The first ended in that Scottish Cup win. The second in relegation from the Premier Division, as it was then, and the third in promotion back up to it. A mixed bag. After that, Brewster declined a new contract because he felt he could do better financially and moved to Greece with Ionikos, a club based in Athens’s port of Piraeus. In five years there, he became an icon. Once, shortly after Sean Connery had visited the Greek capital, Brewster came onto a chat show to the James Bond theme. In 1999, another station had a camera on him as he watched the Scotland-England Euro 2000 playoff in its studios.
His adopted country could not have envisaged that just over four years later they would be winning the tournament, having previously never managed to win a game in a major finals. The Greeks astonished and ambushed opponents such as Portugal (twice), France and the Czech Republic with a counter-attacking strategy and fitness levels that seemed almost superhuman. “The Greeks are a fit race anyway but it was also definitely beneficial to them that their players hadn’t played as many games as the other top players had played,” admits Brewster. “They were well-organised and the momentum just went from one round to the next and suddenly the belief was there. When you see things progressing, it makes you even stronger, everybody wants the ball. The fitter and stronger you are, then you win more than you lose.”
Brewster’s Inverness team had similar staying power, bestowed by the rigorous regime their manager preaches and Peter Davidson, his fitness coach, puts into practice. Davidson was previously part-time and also worked at Inverness College, but will be full-time at Tannadice. It is easy to see where Brewster gets it from. He is from a sporty family. His father, Jim, is a champion cyclist; Marie, his mother, was a swimmer, gymnast and keep-fit instructor; and his younger sister, Susan, is a keen equestrian. Brewster turns 40 in December but has no immediate plans to retire from playing. “The important thing is I enjoy training, so I’ll always be involved in that, and if I am feeling good and able to make a contribution then I might play.”
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He may be able to bring the best out of his strikers, Lee Miller and Collin Samuel, the two former Falkirk strikers taken to Tannadice by Gordon Chisholm and Ian McCall, his predecessors. “Lee Miller made a big name for himself at Hearts and that’s why Dundee United were desperate to take him, and I think Lee will agree that he hasn’t fulfilled the potential that he showed at Hearts last season. I can only speak from now onwards and if he works hard, he’ll get back to what he’s capable of. I guarantee you that. I spoke to Sammy (Samuel) about using his pace at the right times. Not bursting 50 yards to close a full-back down when somebody else can do that. All over the park you need to work in pairs, hunt in packs, and that starts with the front two.”
Brewster also believes physical fitness and mental fitness feed off each other. “You have to have that enthusiasm to keep going. It’s not just basic fitness, it’s some individual wanting to burst his backside in the 91st minute to get on the end of a cross.”
He has plenty enthusiasm of his own, partly reflecting his own late start in the full-time game. After being released from Tannadice when Jim McLean was manager he worked for a building materials firm and played part-time for Forfar, but still wore his United tammy to training on cold winter nights. He came into the full-time ranks at the age of 25 when Jimmy Nicholl took him to Raith Rovers.
The fee was £57,500 but Brewster always reminds people “plus VAT” when they mention this. Now he hopes his principles can add some value to United’s underachievers.