To go with the Uefa Cup final defeat by IFK Gothenburg, there was a Premier Division championship in 1983 and a European Cup semi-final lost the following season to a nefarious Roma side. It was a time when tangerine dreams came true so often that some supporters could be forgiven for refusing to wake up. Thompson, though, vehemently denies his expectations are as modern as Rubik’s cubes or leg warmers. “We will never get back to the eighties, when we were one of the best teams in Europe,” he said on Friday night, after finally thrashing out a compensation package for Craig Brewster to become United’s 28th manager.
United could never be called a sleeping giant but Brewster, who will be unveiled at a press conference tomorrow, is the latest to attempt to prod them awake. In 34 years, from 1959 to 1993, United had just two managers but in the 12 years since there have been nine. Five of them were McLean’s attempts to replace himself, an often fraught process that accounted for Ivan Golac, Billy Kirkwood, Tommy McLean, Paul Sturrock and Alex Smith. Brewster, meanwhile, will be the fifth manager to have worked for Thompson, who dismissed Smith shortly after finally gaining control from McLean in September 2002. Soon, he will have sunk £4m of his personal fortune into the club but he is still waiting for a decent return on it.
Ian McCall managed fifth place in 2004 but United tumbled back down the Premierleague as though falling off a precipice last season and he was replaced by Gordon Chisholm, his assistant, who carried a Scottish Cup run on until a final defeat by Celtic. In one week last April, United beat Hibs in the Scottish Cup semi-final, Hearts and Rangers, at Ibrox, but it was a mirage from a side that eventually finished ninth in the league.
That is also their current position, suggesting it was no fluke, and the club has sometimes consumed those who have come near it in the modern era. McLean had a heart bypass and Thompson’s own battle with prostate cancer has too often taken a back seat as he has attempted to resurrect United’s fortunes with long hours. On Friday night at 6pm, he returned to Dundee after finalising the £200,000 deal for Brewster at a meeting in Gleneagles and realised, as he sat sipping a glass of orange juice in a hotel on the city’s outskirts that he hadn’t eaten all day. It says a lot for him that he was still prepared to speak to the Sunday newspaper journalists waiting for an audience. Thompson wanted to be brief, but it was not hard to get him talking. You only have to mention the club that, he admits, has become an obsession.
He is convinced that in Brewster, who will attend today’s match with Falkirk, he has finally found his man. “I’m sure Craig Brewster will prove to be the person that will do it for us,” said Thompson. “I have no doubt at all that I have got the right man. I’m sure I’ll be quoted on that at some later stage if I haven’t.”
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Brewster’s father is a United fan and so are many of his closest friends. The only box he does not tick is a big one marked “Experience” and that may be why Thompson might have attempted to prise Jim Jefferies from Kilmarnock if he had been given sufficient encouragement. Nevertheless, Brewster is seasoned beyond his years, something indicated by his successful spell as a player with Ionikos in Greece, where he assimilated so well into the culture and language that he stayed for five years. “His maturity for his age impressed me,” added Thompson. “I think he’s just turned 39 but he doesn’t talk like a 39-year-old. He’ll be manager but be available to play as well once we get his registration. He’s a fitness fanatic and he won’t take nonsense from anybody. I think he’s going to get the best out of the squad that we’ve got. He will take a few weeks to see exactly what’s happening and then he ’ll give me a plan as to how we go forward. I don’t know what it is, but Inverness seem to be playing harder for the 90 minutes than most other clubs. He’s got something going with that. I’ve spoken to people at Rangers and Celtic and they have been astounded when playing Inverness that they’re still running strong in the 95th minute. I don’t know what he’s doing but we’d like some of it. He’s the man for the job and I’m convinced that he’s got all that’s required. His fitness theories and the way he commands attention.”
United have not had such staying power and there have been graphic examples of it. Two-nil up on MyPa-47 of Finland at half-time in the second leg of a Uefa Cup tie at Tannadice last August, they drew 2-2 and went out on away goals. Two-nil up on Aberdeen last Saturday in a Scottish Cup tie, also at home, they somehow lost it too. Brewster will bring Malcolm Thomson, his assistant, Peter Davidson, his fitness coach, and Stevie Campbell, a youth coach with him. Nevertheless, it is on the minds of the United squad rather than their legs that the real work needs done. Too many careers are drifting at Tannadice and Brewster cannot allow some of his players to drag his along in the flow. Once, when picking a dream team for a newspaper, he selected United’s Grant Brebner in its midfield beside Glenn Hoddle, Patrick Vieira and Brian Laudrup, but also suggested that his former Hibs teammate had underachieved for his talent.
It has since emerged that Brebner was being distracted by a gambling addiction that he has only managed to address properly in the last seven months. “He’ll have to come in and be his own man and stamp his management style,” said the midfielder. “He won’t be coming to annihilate people, he will be coming to make this club better. I wouldn’t put the games we have lost down to fitness. We’ve not been sitting in training having a jolly. When you lose two or three games the way we have then your confidence takes a hit.”
The constant speculation over Chisholm’s position has also had a debilitating effect. “It’s been a while now that this has been dragging on,” added Brebner. “It’s probably the best part of three months now that every game we played there’s been the speculation of jobs and things. I can talk on Chissy’s part a little bit but I know from a playing point of view it was never nice because every game we were playing it felt like we were playing for the management team to keep them in a job. At first, it was media-driven but it sort of snowballed and became, barring a miracle, inevitable. We would be lying if we said we didn’t come off after some games thinking we might have cost the manager his job. We were playing under that pressure and the papers led you to believe that it was going to be the case.”
Nevertheless, it is simply too glib to characterise Thompson as a serial sacker of managers, if anything he was too soft when hiring them, particularly Paul Hegarty and Chisholm, who were promoted after spells as caretakers when Smith and McCall departed. Each dismissal has cost him more than the compensation cheques which he says have been overestimated by the media. “It’s been a bad week and if I have done anything cruel this week — and I feel it has been — it’s only because of my love for Dundee United. Each manager has been different, a prior board had already agreed that Alex Smith should leave and they were waiting for me to come in as majority shareholder.
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“Paul Hegarty was really holding the fort for Ian McCall to come and everyone knows that. With Ian, the first year we stayed up and the next season we were fifth. Let’s not kid ourselves, when I appointed Ian, and I got on well with him, he was the top man in the First Division. Then Gordon did fantastic in getting us to the Scotish Cup final and the week with the wins over Hibs, Rangers and then Hearts was one of the best we’ve had for years.
“You say I’ve been through it before, but it’s very hard. You don’t make any friends in football, only enemies.”
Dundee United v Falkirk, today, 3pm