United fans will be having canary
It’s with a degree of sadness that Dundee United are fast becoming Scottish football’s canary down the mine.
There’s no danger of toxic gas mind you, just the waft of hot air and backslaps over their latest profit and loss accounts which would bring a tear to a glass eye. First the sums.
Over the last two years they’ve run up losses of £6.7million, five consecutive seasons without a profit and that’s despite turnover increasing last season by £800,000 and gate receipts being up by 37 per cent.
Owner Mark Ogren has requested fans to waive their right for season-ticket refunds for the current season and renew this summer - these are exciting times he has promised.
Smoke-and-mirror statistics are being churned out of Tannadice. The academy, which they claim is being recognised as one of the best in Britain no less, will save the day. However, it’s all baseless.
The reality on the ground suggests top spin is being applied and the self-congratulatory tone from a string of staff and United hierarchy is baffling.
After getting a glimpse of Micky Mellon’s men in the flesh last week at Hamilton, the hazard signs were flashing.
United have the bragging rights to having handed the most debuts to academy players in Premiership games this season – five to be exact. But most of them are now loaned out to a host of lower league clubs.
The Dundee United Youth Development Board has donated a six-figure sum into the club’s youth set-up since 2016 – and that figure has been supplemented by the Tangerine coffers. They should be demanding more than a few cameos.
That investment doesn’t stand up to scrutiny when you scan a first-team list, be it at Hamilton or Friday night at Forfar.
To be blunt, this United side’s a mediocre one.
The only academy kid regularly on show is 23-year-old full-back Jamie Robson.
If any of the much-lauded teenagers were the real deal then they wouldn’t be cutting about at Cove Rangers, Montrose
or Peterhead, for that matter. Asking fans for acts of charity when they are paying thousands too much each week for loan players such as Marc McNulty and Luke Bolton is an outrage.
When a club is recording losses at a time when gate receipts and turnover’s are on the up then somebody’s making money and it isn’t Ogren.
His excitement about the future is based on an academy which appears incapable of sustaining a first team. Debutants or not, there’s no durability.
My old club is coaching-staff heavy and has joined the International Youth Methodological Board.
A bit of a mouthful and another example of the mumbo jumbo which is now par for the course these days, with coaching approaches akin to reinventing the wheel.
When 17-year-old Jude Bellingham is scoring for Borussia Dortmund in the Champions League, surely the method in Scotland shouldn’t be about colt teams – just get your most promising young talents into the first team.
Every European league is awash with teenagers, they’re running riot on a weekly basis.
Mellon being coy about speculation linking him with the vacancy at Doncaster Rovers is no coincidence, he’s a streetwise Glaswegian and knows it won’t be long before an ill wind starts blowing.
The young Terrors don’t appear to be as terrifying as they used to be, on Friday night the youth team lost to St Mirren.
It will be a dead canary next if they’re not careful.
Top spin is being applied and all the self praise from a string of staff and hierarchy at United is baffling