Latest news with #TonyDocherty
Scotsman
7 days ago
- Sport
- Scotsman
Former Hearts star in brutally honest response after being named rival manager
Hearts' former captain has been appointed boss at a rival - which has sparked digruntlement Sign up to our Hearts newsletter Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to Edinburgh News, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... A former Hearts captain has delivered an honest response on becoming the manager of a rival - saying he's not the man for them if they want a proven silverware winner. Steven Pressley has been out of management since leaving Carlisle United in 2019 and was a shock appointment by Dundee to replace Tony Docherty as head coach. He has most recently worked behind the scenes with English Premier League side Brentford but now returns to Scotland for the first time in a working capacity since departing Falkirk's manager chair in 2013. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Pressley, a former captain at Hearts who featured for the club between 1998-2006 while also appearing at Rangers, Coventry City, Dundee United, Celtic, Randers and Falkirk alongside Scotland duty, has addressed criticism from fans over his arrival. He has done so in honest fashion. Steven Pressley on becoming Dundee manager He said: 'Like all management it very much depends on what lens you're looking through. f you are a Dundee supporter looking for a manager with a history of producing titles and winning honours then I'm not your man. I've not demonstrated that yet. I hope I can demonstrate that moving forward but my career to date doesn't suggest that. 'But certainly from a development perspective and creating a style of play and the way a team performs I have demonstrated that over the course. I would like to think the four or five years I've had out of football, not just the education within Brentford as a club, I have been working on my uni degree, all of those in the mix I hope brings a different type of leadership than before. Hopefully with that type of leadership we can bring success.' How university has helped former Hearts captain He added: 'I've just finished my degree. One of the things that I most enjoyed about the course was self-reflection and looking at how I can improve as a leader. When I was a player, I was generally a captain. And then I went from that to being almost a manager immediately. And you almost, through your title alone, can make people do things. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'Then you go into a job, which I was involved in for four years, where you don't. You have to build relationships. You have to manage people in different ways. And it's been a brilliant education for me. So I've changed a lot. I'm a lot calmer, a lot more controlled, a much smaller ego. Part of that has been that when you're a young manager, you want to take on the world. I still see it with so many young managers. Then you have the difficulties, setbacks, failures, you have all of those things. 'Eventually it shapes and moulds you and changes you. And I've had a lot of that, a lot of experience, disappointments, self-reflection. And a lot of growth. I'm a different character, but that's normal throughout your life. 'There were certain elements of my own management style that I didn't like. But equally, there were certain elements of my management that I did like and I think that have helped me and I would continue with. So it's just a natural process. The most important thing is to be able to reflect, to improve and be able to grow. And that's what I see it as - a journey. The last four or five years have really changed me a lot in many ways. I'm a lot calmer, a lot more understanding, especially understanding of others around me.'
BBC News
13-06-2025
- Sport
- BBC News
'I don't want my players to be scared to speak'
Steven Pressley believes he developed "a softer side" in his role as Brentford's head of individual player development and thinks it will help him as the new Dundee head former Scotland international succeeds Tony Docherty in the Dens Park dugout and was unveiled to the media for the first time since returning to Scotland earlier 51-year-old spent 12 years in England and paid particular focus to his stint with the Bees, adding it has given him a refined perspective."It was a great role in terms of education and understanding, and allowed me to form really strong relationships with personnel and get to know the players," he said."Sometimes when we go through the transition from being a player to manager, we forget the difficulties of being a player."Being a football player is a hard journey. There's so much vulnerability about it, there's so much disappointment, so much pressure around the job."Working with the players very closely reminds me of just how difficult that journey can be."It's really important that we have that type of culture within this club where you can be vulnerable, we are going to support each other and help each other, we are going to make you better."I want to be a manager where my players feel they can come to me and speak on issues that they have and they're not scared to do so. The role has allowed me to develop in that way. "It's allowed me to develop my softer side in many ways and hopefully that will benefit me."
The Herald Scotland
09-06-2025
- Sport
- The Herald Scotland
The national-team ticking time-bomb the SFA must do more to address
Regardless of who stands on the Hampden touchline, there's a time-bomb ticking under Scotland's national team. An international coach doesn't have the luxury of spending a few quid in the transfer market. And Clarke is cursed by a pool of goalkeepers, central defenders, wingers and strikers as shallow as a Pollokshields puddle. Unless that changes, the problem will plague his successor and every manager after that as well. The SFA have a plan to tackle the dearth of new and emerging talent. If it goes the same way as the think tanks of yesteryear, performances like that Hampden horlicks against Iceland will be the way of things in future. Study the current crop of players in the national team and Billy Gilmour, Kieran Tierney, Nathan Patterson, Aaron Hickey, Lewis Ferguson, Ben Doak, Andrew Robertson, John McGinn and Ryan Christie were all playing first-team football by the age of 18. That matters because kids in the tricky transition phase between 16 and 21 need to learn what the game's all about. And a thread on social media by Stenhousemuir assistant manager Brown Ferguson shows what a terrible job clubs in the SPFL Premiership are doing of bringing through talented footballers. In season 2021/22, the overall percentage of Scots starting games in the top flight was 45 per cent. This season, the figure dropped to 31.46 per cent. Just 41 of the 132 players who started Premiership games in an average week were Scottish. Depressingly, only four of that 132 were under the age of 21. Luka Modric made his first start at 17, Erling Haaland at 15, Martin Odegaard at 14 and Josip Gvardiol at 17. While no one should delude themselves that there's a Lamine Yamal hiding away in the Reserve League of the SPFL, no one knows for sure what's down there because academy players in Scotland have a limited chance of showing what they can do. Cursed by a lack of trust, managers don't feel they have the time or the breathing space to take a punt on the kids. And, given what happened to Tony Docherty, you can almost see their point. A report by the CIES football observatory shows that Dundee gave more minutes to players aged 21 and under than any other team in the Scottish Premiership this season. The Dens Park hierarchy are never slow to remind people how much they care about youth development. Yet sometimes it pays to study the actions and not the words. By blooding Lyall Cameron, Josh Mulligan, Luke Graham, Sebastian Palmer-Houlden, Olaswaseun Adewumi, Ethan Ingram, Finn Robson and Cesar Garza in the first team, Docherty effectively signed his own P45. Tony Docherty gave Lyall Cameron time to shine at Dundee (Image: Rob Casey - SNS Group) The minute the men upstairs realised their bright young things were knee high in the relegation brown stuff, they took fright and sacked him. Clubs can't have this both ways. They can't perform a song and dance about their record of fielding academy graduates on one hand. Then sack the manager who picked them with the other. Read more: Ferguson on how Scotland squad feel about Iceland debacle Iceland keeper tells Scotland rookie how to bounce back from errors They can't encourage managers with a fraction of the resources of Celtic and Rangers to pitch young players into the team. Then lose patience and replace them with Steven Pressley as soon as they hit a bit of turbulence. Contrast Docherty's fate with that of Stephen Robinson at St Mirren. Last season the Saints coached served up a pitiful 0.8 per cent of first-team minutes to players aged 21 or under. In mitigation Evan Mooney, 17, came off the bench eight times, claiming a terrific assist in a Paisley win over Rangers, then broke his foot. Another teenager, Callum Penman, was another who saw bits and bobs of first-team action. Give Robinson his due. Flooding the team with experienced, physical imports from clubs like Gillingham, Morecambe and Waterford seems to work. Fans couldn't give two hoots about the direct football or the lack of academy prospects in the team so long as they're storming the top six year after year. In a footballing utopia Robinson would blood Mooney and Penman in the first team and give them a chance to shine. In the real world managers see Docherty taking a bullet to the head in Dundee and make a subconscious note to avoid the same mistake. The pitiful plight of the Scotland national team is not the problem of Robinson or Derek McInnes or Jimmy Thelin. In a landscape where the average tenure of a Scottish Premiership coach is 12.75 months, they've enough on their plate simply hanging on to their job. Responsibility for fixing this mess falls, as it should, on the shoulders of the SFA. There's not much they can do about the production line of talented young players being lured south at the age of 16 by big signing-on fees. Overseen by chief football officer Andy Gould and head of men's elite strategy Chris Docherty, club cooperation agreements might do something to address the lack of a first-team pathway. From June 16, three players at a time can flit between Rangers and Raith Rovers or, say, Aberdeen and Cove with flexibility. Players with promise will go down to the lower leagues and learn how to mix it with grown men. For some the experience will be a triumph, for others a disaster. However it pans out they'll learn more from a brief taste of life in the real world they ever will holed up in the pampered never-land of a club academy An initiative worth the effort, cooperation agreements should be part of a package of measures. Not the only one. As things stand the Governing Body Appeal system awards too many work permits to average overseas players. They could look at that for a start. The SFA are also in the process of handing applications for millions of pounds in Pitching Up facilities funding from some of the nation's top clubs. That cash really should be conditional on those clubs agreeing to blood a quota of young players in the first team. No minutes, no money. By hook or by crook, the SFA need to fix this. If they can't, the Tartan Army can look forward to more Ciaran Slickers being slung in to a lion's den they're hopelessly unprepared for. With predictable results.
The Courier
02-06-2025
- Sport
- The Courier
Steven Pressley appointment sparks Dundee fan fury
Dundee fans have reacted furiously to the appointment of Steven Pressley as the club's head coach. Shaun Maloney, Charlie Adam, Temuri Ketsbaia, Scott Brown and David Healy were all linked with the vacancy following the shock sacking of Tony Docherty by Dens chief John Nelms. But on Monday afternoon, former United, Celtic, Hearts and Scotland defender Pressley was announced as Docherty's replacement. And supporters immediately voiced their anger on social media. @DensParkChoir wrote on X: 'Happy to eat my words if I have to. 'F***ing honking appointment from Dundee. F*** off. 'Vastly underwhelming. 'If Pressley was the standout candidate then who, legitimately, was on that shortlist? 'He has my backing and I hope he proves everyone wrong but f*** me this is disappointing. 'Makes sacking Docherty look mental now…This feels like nightmare fuel.' @Type232 added: 'Just when you think this club has peaked with the banter, they do this. 'A f***ing horrendous decision. Get right in the f***ing bin.' @grazer 33 said: 'This will be the lowest season ticket sales in history. Not been a manager since 2019 and is the outstanding candidate! Only Dundee.' The appointment came on the same day the Dark Blues confirmed an extension to the club's Super Early Bird season ticket deal for the 2025/26 campaign to Friday June 6. @Darkblue63 wrote: 'I want my season ticket money back.' @soccermarsh1 called it 'the most underwhelming appointment in the history of Dundee Football Club'. Like several of the names linked with the Dens vacancy, Pressley – nicknamed Elvis – worked with Dark Blues technical director Gordon Strachan during his playing days. @Liam_DFC said: 'Strachan out.' @charlie_t_2004 wrote: 'Are season tickets refundable?' @Caledonia1893 said: 'Is this for real? Has the official account been hacked?' @CraigMotion3 added: 'Wow, just wow. Thank f*** I held off on season ticket renewal.' Others took aim at Dundee managing director Nelms. @SorareOnABudget wrote: 'He has overseen failure after failure. 'If the club genuinely thought this appointment would result in a rush on season tickets, it just shows how f***ing incompetent they really are.' @jackhayes_ said: 'Get Nelms out. Ruining the club.' @cassidy_kev wrote: 'Hope all the Tony Docherty haters have a great season.'
BBC News
02-06-2025
- Business
- BBC News
Dundee fans 'All Shook Up' - but Pressley brings 'vast experience'
When Tony Docherty was sacked with the dust barely settling on a disappointing Premiership campaign, few Dundee fans who would have thought they would be uttering the phrase 'Elvis has entered the building' just a few weeks the time of the departure of Docherty - and his backroom staff - the club stated their intention to "restructure the football department".Giving Steven Pressley the title of head coach, rather than manager, and the creation of a new technical manager position, which will be occupied by David Longwell, definitely projects the look that things will be different going social media is anything to go by, the appointment of Pressley has left a large number of the Dundee support 'All Shook Up'. But if the new regime can hit the ground running, it could be a case of 'Loving You'.Apologies for the rather predictable Elvis song there will be some who will point to the fact Pressley has been away from the Scottish game for more than a decade, plus he has not held a managerial role anywhere since leaving Carlisle United six years there can be no doubt Pressley is bringing vast experience to Dens he will also have a knowledge of the English market, particularly with regards to some potential young talent coming through the ranks south of the border. That knowledge could prove invaluable as Dundee look to strengthen their also played under Dundee technical director Gordon Strachan at Celtic, so the ex-Scotland boss will be well aware of the qualities his former player can bring to this is not about the past. The success or failure of any appointment is determined by results - and ultimately that is what Pressley and co will be judged on going forward.
