The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
‘Work with Fulham ready to bear fruit’
Tony Asghar believes Dundee United’s partnership with Fulham is almost ready to bear fruit. United announced their collaboration – centred around player and coach development – with the newly promoted Cottagers in January.
The Tangerines sporting director has revealed that work behind the scenes, which has been ongoing since before the link-up went public, is progressing well and fans could soon see the benefit first-hand when players start to move between the clubs.
“These partnerships can often be a bit of a fluff piece, but this has been working for a long time before we announced it,” said Asghar.
“One of the directors of Fulham has been up, their director of football has been up as has their academy director.
“We have been down there and shared a lot of common practices in how we are going to move forward. From a football perspective we’re looking at high performance. Can we get players from there who could come into our environment?
“Dundee United have an opportunity in Scotland to get players in that they can’t in England. There’s a pathway for us to look at players they can’t get and we can. We can look at loans and other aspects.”
Both clubs are Americanowned, with Mark Ogren, right, in control of United and Shahid Khan providing the financial muscle at Fulham.
It’s a shared trait that isn’t lost on Asghar and the Tangerines’ chief is sure, in time, the clubs will have even more in common – as United will with their other partner outfits.
“With Fulham, I like the identity. It’s an Americanowned club which has another sports franchise,” said Asghar.
“It’s a club that has just been promoted, as we were a few years ago. There are a lot of synergies.
“There are good people at Fulham. From Alistair Macintosh, the director of football, or Huw Jennings.
“We are going to grow it. There were a few players we were going to bring in during the January window from there, but things didn’t work out so.
“It will be fruitful and we will work hard at that within our partnerships.
“We brought a goalkeeping coach in on secondment from Southampton, Ryan Flood.
“That worked really well so there may be opportunities for some of our staff to go down there.
“We have the partnership with Northern Virginia, Brian Welsh’s team, where we hope to send over two players and a coach this season. Things take time. “We need to build it and I feel positive we will have good results.”