Goldie’ s aim is to make City slicker

His employer may have changed but Andy Goldie’s passion for producing and progressing young footballers remains unaltered.

“It doesn’t matter whether you drive a bus, cut the grass or coach individuals; your job is player development,” he says. “This is our identity.”

Swansea City’s £10 million training base in Lindore provides a lush, sprawling backdrop for Courier Sport’s conversation with the former Dundee United academy director.

The floodlights of the Swans’ Liberty Stadium soar in the distance.

They once shone upon the likes of Michu, Wilfried Bony and Bafetimbi Gomis as the Welsh outfit rose to the Premier League.

But Swansea are now in the Championship, on the fast-track to selfsustainability and seeking to build on their proud history of producing home-grown heroes.

Young talents like Ollie Cooper and Ben Kabango are the blueprint.

And Goldie is the man tasked with overseeing this new era, having been named academy manager in July on the back of his work at Tannadice.

“Swansea City have enjoyed tremendous success in developing young players,” Goldie said.

“Seven Swansea academy products are in the Wales World Cup squad, and we were the second-highest represented team at the last European Championship, behind Barcelona.

“There has always been a focus on developing our own players. The fans want it, and that is the culture and desire here.

“First and foremost, we want players to have success at Swansea. But we make peace with the fact Tottenham will buy Joe Rodon, Liverpool will buy Joe Allen and Manchester United will buy Dan James.

“We’ll also invest in emerging talent. Last year we bought Flynn Downes from Ipswich for around £1 million – and we sold him to West Ham a year later for £14m. That’s an indication of the type of club we are.”

There are faint echoes of Goldie’s three years at Tannadice from 2019, with the club able to bank fees for Kerr Smith, Jamie Robson and Louis Appéré.

Goldie’s plan to focus on individual player development – including intensive, customised one-to-one coaching, married with classroom work – is something United sought to implement. The realities of staffing numbers made that challenging.

At Swansea, he has 40 coaches.

While far from a blank cheque, the resources are a different world from Tannadice. Nevertheless, there are lessons to be learned from his time at United.

“I’m doing a course with the English FA,” continued Goldie. “The presentation I am delivering is comparing the first 90 days at Dundee United to my first 90 days at Swansea.

“As much as we achieved success, and for all the things we got right at Dundee United, personally I made so many mistakes during that early period.

“That’s probably the biggest credit I would give to the ownership, Tony (Asghar, United sporting director) and the staff: they allowed those mistakes and supported that process.”

Goldie added: “One of the things I probably didn’t get right is appreciating how valuable the people who had been there previously were.

“I probably took them for granted at the start and it took me some time to understand that Dundee United was built on people like that.”

NEW CHALLENGE: Ex-united academy chief Andy Goldie is now working on developing talent at Swansea City.