IT IS perhaps fitting that Dundee United's base of operations for much of this week has been a cricket pavilion. Craig Levein has the look of a batsman who has played himself into his innings, and is looking increasingly comfortable at the crease.
So much so that his Dundee United side are being tipped to finish as 'best of the rest' in the Scottish Premier League, and, following Rangers' troubled summer, have even been spoken of as most likely team to split the Old Firm at the top of the tab
le.
With the new season comes promise at Tannadice, but also the prospect of great heartache. The chairman, Eddie Thompson, is ailing and his struggle cannot be ignored when contemplating a season which burrows into the months ahead. The chairman's battle with cancer is on a day-by-day basis and can't help affect the mood at Tannadice.
But there is a mercy, and it is drawn from the feeling that United are entering a new season in better fettle than for some considerable time. Following last season's run to the CIS cup final, and the sale of Barry Robson and Noel Hunt, Thompson has increased the budget by £150,000.
The team's options have improved too. For the striking positions alone he can pick between Jon Daly, Northern Ireland internationalist Warren Feeney, Andis Shala and now Roy O'Donovan, who was signed yesterday in a loan move from Sunderland.
Another striker, Francesco Sandaza, who Levein describes as having arrived in a "blaze of glory" at Tannadice, is generating particular excitement among fans. Last season Levein mostly operated a 4-5-1 system, due to the limited choice of striking partnership available. Now he is leaning towards 4-4-2: a more natural Levein formation, and proof, once more, of his immersion at Tannadice.
This is not to say that Levein has become becalmed, but perhaps his understandable outburst at the end of last season – when he raged against a series of major errors by referee Michael McCurry after a 3-1 defeat by Rangers at Ibrox – simply points to a man fiercely protective of what he now has, and who has found something worth fighting for. "I am comfortable here because I have got belief in the people I am working with," he says. "I have belief in the coaches I am working with. I have a lot of belief in the players, and I also get on fantastically well with the chairman. And there is an idea of knowing where we are going."
"I am not pulling the wool over anyone's eyes at Dundee United," he continues. "I haven't said I am committing myself to the club for ten years. I don't think anyone can. The club won't commit to me for ten years, for a start. But I am happy here. And that's a big consideration for me. My ambition has not changed but I am wiser.
"Before I left Hearts I was looking for my name to be linked with this job and that job because I wanted out. But I am not interested now. If something comes up that is presented to me it really would need to be the right thing."
Although United, together with Monday night's opponents Hamilton Accies, are the last to get their season under way, few expect the Tannadice side to be back-markers come the end of the campaign. This makes a change to the time in recent past when United were perceived as perennial strugglers.
The Tannadice side were often unable to confound this expectation. Since 1996/97, when they finished third in the league after promotion from the First Division, United have finished in the top half of the league only three times. On another three occasions they finished just one place above bottom position.
Managers came and went. Though they observed a culture of failure at Tannadice they themselves failed, in the main, to eradicate it. Ian McCall's regime offered some hope, and also a fifth place finish in 2004. But the following season, amid cut-backs and poor form, the club lapsed back into a state of decline. McCall became a victim, and so, too, did his successors, Gordon Chisholm and Craig Brewster. The Tannadice side were considered easy prey – as soft as one of the tomatoes gently ripening in greenhouses in the Arklay Street allotments, behind what is now the Eddie Thompson stand.
"It was about changing the mentality," says Levein, when asked how he transformed the fortunes of the club. "A lot of players moved on – some good players, some not so good.
"I had to change the thought process. Sometimes that can only happen by moving people out. I wouldn't say when I came in they were indifferent to losing, but they were inured to it. That was worrying. Now we don't like getting beaten at all. It hurts. You see a reaction to it in the next game."
Given United's plight after Brewster left, the ideal credentials for a new manager was someone with a background in the Magic Circle. Or at least a degree in multi-tasking. The candidate was required to make a dejected team hard to beat, while at the same time effecting an overhaul of the youth system.
He was also required to busy himself with the search for adequate training facilities, which is why Levein is holding court in a cricket pavilion on Thursday at the University of St Andrews. United are in talks with the ancient university and hope to secure a deal where they will upgrade the facilities in return for part-ownership.
Fortunately for United, Levein was available when they needed a miracle worker in 2006. He had just joined Raith Rovers on an ad hoc basis after the termination of his contract at Leicester City, but was also being pursued by Dunfermline. United were a better vehicle for his ambitions, although a genuine fear he has out-grown even them grips fans of the Tannadice club. Despite the surroundings, Levein uses a baseball analogy when contemplating the manager's lot.
"It's three strikes and you're out," he says. "That's the way it works in my eyes. You are allowed to fail once, sometimes you are allowed to fail twice, but you can't fail three times, no matter the circumstances. I jumped out of the Hearts job for various reasons – not all of them were the right ones, in fact few of them were right reasons – to do something I always wanted to do, and manage in England. I didn't think it through properly. It's not until later that I realised that.
He adds that he would have to think "a lot harder" about the next offer, should there be one, now that he has used up one of his lives with Leicester.
The pavilion in which we meet has been temporarily turned into the United players' dining hall. In they troop after training, as the rain continues to fall outside. Broccoli and stilton soup is on the menu, though Levein himself is still digesting the £5000 fine relating to his McCurry comments, and which was meted out to him on Thursday by the SFA. "It was a fair hearing," he accepts. With the start of the new season just around the corner, and his chairman unwell, Levein seems minded to let the matter be. It is unlikely he will appeal.
"The season starts on Monday and I don't want anything else in my head," he says. "I feel I got a fair hearing.
"I did have a real go at Mike McCurry's performance. I can't guarantee that if the same thing happened I wouldn't say what I said again. I felt I had a duty to the club, the chairman, everybody. For me there is only so far you can be pushed on certain things."
He has marked himself out as his own man, one who kow-tows to no-one. Gordon Smith, the SFA chief executive, also felt his wrath last season after an article in which he appeared to suggest every SPL club had written to him with a grievance about referees. It was, perhaps, ironic that United later did have reason to do this, but Levein accused Smith of being a serial blunderer. Relations are clearly not warm.
"Gordon Smith has not spoken to me since I freed his son (Grant – once of Dundee United]. That's a fact. I find that bizarre."
But he won't be sidetracked by such petty concerns and has kept himself busy with the more crucial elements of a manager's life – such as having first opponents Hamilton Accies watched five times already this summer. "I have a job to do with Dundee United," he said. "It's not my job to go on a crusade. By going as far as I did I only opened a can of worms. But I don't have time to feed the worms. I just want to do my job.
"Last season, after every single match we played, I shook hands with the referee. I have been a manager now for 11 years and been sent to the stand only once. That tells its own story."
The full article contains 1545 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
