Youth set-up must survive

Unless Dundee United can pull themselves back from the brink with a spectacular end to the season, which isn’t impossible, it will be a summer of change at Tannadice.

You don’t get relegated without cutbacks having to be made.

Stephen Thompson has been pretty clear in the past that going down will come at a cost.

The one thing I would say is, if it comes to that point and all expenditure is under review, the club’s youth set-up has to be protected.

Producing their own players is in United’s DNA. Lose that and the club loses its identity.

Relegation won’t affect United’s reputation as far as attracting promising young players to the club.

Parents will still know that their boy will be at the best possible place to start his career and, if he’s good enough, get a first team chance. That won’t change.

United have to guard and maintain their reputation from the under-nines, all the way through.

They need to have the best systems, best coaches and best young talent.

More than ever, if United go down, they will need to nurture their own players.

Actually, I’d go further than saying the academy needs to be protected from cuts. It should be strengthened.

Hampden heartache

I was gutted for United on Saturday. Losing a semi-final penalty shoot-out is the latest in a long line of body blows that the club and its fans have had to absorb this season.

It was a pretty even game and United weren’t able to show that there was a gulf between a team in mixed form in the Premiership and a team in poor form in the Championship.

Both semis came down to shoot-outs and both winners were the team playing with less pressure.

You could see more freedom in the way the Hibs and Rangers boys took their penalties compared to the way the United and Celtic boys did. I don’t think that was a coincidence. Rangers were the most impressive of the four teams playing at Hampden.

They look like a side that has benefitted from being able to develop their style of play at a lower level.

One of the biggest things I took away from my time playing under Walter Smith at Ibrox was that you need to find a way of playing with freedom.

Mind you, it’s one thing being able to do that in the Championship, and another taking it into an Old Firm cup semi-final.

I was watching my son play on Sunday morning and I was getting asked at the side of the pitch how I thought the game would go.

The youngsters in the Rangers team quite rightly got a lot of praise after making a big impact, but I knew Kenny Miller would be an important player for Rangers.

He might be at the end of his career but he probably had more international and big game experience than anybody else on the pitch.

Celtic weren’t able to free themselves up like Rangers were and the tension showed itself up in a couple of awful penalties.

The challenge now for Rangers is to sustain that sort of form in next season’s league campaign. And the pressure won’t be off them for that.

Changes at Celtic?

There seems to be a common consensus forming that Ronny Deila will move on in the summer.

At the big clubs the desire for change seems to be almost constant.

I’m not sure if that’s the best strategy but it’s the way of the football world.

At Celtic a manager has to manage unrealistic expectations from the supporters.

Just to get to the Champions League group stages is a huge achievement.

There seems to be a shelf life for managers these days, and maybe Deila will feel that he’s had enough himself.

This wouldn’t be the worst time for Celtic to make a change.

They’ve got the league all but won and have a few weeks to identify a new boss and give him enough time to get his own players in before the Champions League qualifiers.

And it could also be a good time to take over at Celtic Park.

As I said earlier, Rangers will be under pressure to live up to the Hampden performance they’ve just produced.

And, you get the feeling that the Celtic money men have only spent what they’ve needed to spend to make sure they keep ahead of the pack domestically.

With Rangers back, and showing they are much-improved, I suspect we might see the biggest-spending summer from Celtic in quite a few years.

Producing their own players is in United’s DNA. Lose that and the club loses its identity

Thrilling finale

The Leicester-Tottenham title run-in is set to be a thrilling one.

It’s a shame they still don’t have to play each other.

I actually think that Stoke played pretty well the other night but Spurs were brilliant.

Both Tottenham and Leicester have very high work-rate and, though they play in different styles, have gamechanging players.

Spurs are more skilful but Leicester have scary pace with Jamie Vardy in the team.

The length of his suspension could be the determining factor.

Five points is probably enough of a cushion for Leicester but I don’t say that with any great certainty.

SNS. Above: anxiety on the faces of Dundee United’s players during the shoot-out defeat at Hampden.

Kenny Miller, top, a key man for Rangers; and Ronny Deila, whose Celtic reign may be nearing an end.