Latest news with #TonyDocherty
BBC News
19 hours ago
- Sport
- BBC News
What will Mulligan bring to Hibs?
After loan spells at Cove Rangers and Peterhead, Josh Mulligan's breakthrough campaign at Dundee came in played 42 times in all competitions to help the club win the Championship title and return to the only played 23 times the following season under Tony Docherty, but was a more important part of the side least his best game came against Hibernian in a 4-1 win at Dens Park in as a right wing-back, he consistently used his strength and rangy stride to power down the flank, causing havoc for the Hibs defence."I'm quite a powerful player, I'd say," Mulligan said. "I'm good with the ball at my feet, I like running at players."I create chances but I also have that other side of my game as well, I'm happy to get stuck in, which is needed in this league."I can't explain how happy I am to be here."At just 22, Mulligan has played a decent number of senior games and has plenty of experience of the Premiership, and often stood out playing for the Scotland under-21s due to his early exposure to first-team football.
Daily Record
4 days ago
- Sport
- Daily Record
Tony Docherty breaks Dundee sack silence as he eyes quickfire dugout return
In an exclusive interview with Record Sport, Docherty insists he looks back on his time at Dens Park with pride Tony Docherty insists he's itching to get back into management after his shock sacking by Dundee. Docherty was surprisingly axed by Dees chiefs at the end of the season - less than 24 hours after guiding the club to Premiership survival. He's since been replaced by Steven Pressley, an appointment that has gone down like a lead balloon with supporters. But the 54-year-old has revealed he's ready to make a quick-fire return to the dugout after a rollercoaster two years at Dens Park. He told Record Sport: "Absolutely. I'm open to anything. I've been in the game a long, long time. "I've been 25 years in dressing rooms at first team level as a coach, as an assistant manager and most recently as a manager. "I just love that environment. I've got that educational background. That's my passion. My passion is improving and developing players and I'm just looking forward to the next opportunity I get to do that." Docherty had been Derek McInnes' long-serving right-hand man at St Johnstone, Bristol City, Aberdeen and Kilmarnock before deciding to go out on his own in 2023. In his debut season in Tayside, Docherty impressively led Dundee to their first top-six finish in nine years and earned multiple Manager of the Year nominations. He nurtured one of the youngest squads in the top-flight, handing more minutes to Under-21 players than any other boss. Experienced Docherty also played a key role in the development of breakout stars Luke McCowan and Lyall Cameron, who have since sealed life-changing moves to Celtic and Rangers And Docherty was the man who ended Dundee's 69-year wait for a derby win in the Scottish Cup, as well as leading them to their first win at Tannadice in two decades. Asked if he reflects on his time at the helm with pride, he said: "Yeah, I think so. I look back on it, and there's a lot within that as well, like your record-breaking derby wins. "Sometimes it can be challenging when you improve and develop players, particularly the young players. I take a lot of pride in the fact that there was a stat out just recently, they were saying about how much we were the youngest team in the league. "So I take pride in that as well, knowing that I played a big part. Not just your boys that you mentioned there, but Owen Beck, Ziyad Larkeche, Aaron Donnelly, Oluwaseun Adewumi... you could go through them all. "I do look back on it with a good sense of pride, but as I say, that chapter's gone now and it's about moving on to the next challenge." Docherty isn't wasting his time by sitting around waiting for the phone to ring for a new job. He spent last week sharing his experience and skills at Oriam as part of the Scottish FA's Uefa A Licence coaching course. Docherty - who revealed he's been sent messages of support by other SPFL bosses - added: "Yeah, I've been busy. I always keep myself busy anyway, but I was down at the SFA A Licence Course, taking the coaches through, being on the staff there with a lot of former managers like Robbie Neilson, Callum Davidson and Jack Ross, boys like that. "So I really enjoyed that. I'm keeping myself busy just waiting for the next challenge. "Football's football. You move on as quickly as you can. I look back on my time at Dundee with real pride, particularly with guys like McCowan, Cameron, Beck and Josh Mulligan. "I would like to think I played a pivotal part in their development and I'm just readying myself for the next challenge." Tune in to Hotline Live every Sunday to Thursday and have your say on the biggest issues in Scottish football and listen to Record Sport's newest podcast, Game On, every Friday for your sporting fix, all in bitesize chunks.
Scotsman
14-06-2025
- Sport
- Scotsman
Former Hearts star in brutally honest response after being named rival manager
Hearts' former captain has been appointed boss at a rival - which has sparked digruntlement Sign up to our Hearts newsletter Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to Edinburgh News, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... A former Hearts captain has delivered an honest response on becoming the manager of a rival - saying he's not the man for them if they want a proven silverware winner. Steven Pressley has been out of management since leaving Carlisle United in 2019 and was a shock appointment by Dundee to replace Tony Docherty as head coach. He has most recently worked behind the scenes with English Premier League side Brentford but now returns to Scotland for the first time in a working capacity since departing Falkirk's manager chair in 2013. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Pressley, a former captain at Hearts who featured for the club between 1998-2006 while also appearing at Rangers, Coventry City, Dundee United, Celtic, Randers and Falkirk alongside Scotland duty, has addressed criticism from fans over his arrival. He has done so in honest fashion. Steven Pressley on becoming Dundee manager He said: 'Like all management it very much depends on what lens you're looking through. f you are a Dundee supporter looking for a manager with a history of producing titles and winning honours then I'm not your man. I've not demonstrated that yet. I hope I can demonstrate that moving forward but my career to date doesn't suggest that. 'But certainly from a development perspective and creating a style of play and the way a team performs I have demonstrated that over the course. I would like to think the four or five years I've had out of football, not just the education within Brentford as a club, I have been working on my uni degree, all of those in the mix I hope brings a different type of leadership than before. Hopefully with that type of leadership we can bring success.' How university has helped former Hearts captain He added: 'I've just finished my degree. One of the things that I most enjoyed about the course was self-reflection and looking at how I can improve as a leader. When I was a player, I was generally a captain. And then I went from that to being almost a manager immediately. And you almost, through your title alone, can make people do things. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'Then you go into a job, which I was involved in for four years, where you don't. You have to build relationships. You have to manage people in different ways. And it's been a brilliant education for me. So I've changed a lot. I'm a lot calmer, a lot more controlled, a much smaller ego. Part of that has been that when you're a young manager, you want to take on the world. I still see it with so many young managers. Then you have the difficulties, setbacks, failures, you have all of those things. 'Eventually it shapes and moulds you and changes you. And I've had a lot of that, a lot of experience, disappointments, self-reflection. And a lot of growth. I'm a different character, but that's normal throughout your life. 'There were certain elements of my own management style that I didn't like. But equally, there were certain elements of my management that I did like and I think that have helped me and I would continue with. So it's just a natural process. The most important thing is to be able to reflect, to improve and be able to grow. And that's what I see it as - a journey. The last four or five years have really changed me a lot in many ways. I'm a lot calmer, a lot more understanding, especially understanding of others around me.'
BBC News
13-06-2025
- Sport
- BBC News
'I don't want my players to be scared to speak'
Steven Pressley believes he developed "a softer side" in his role as Brentford's head of individual player development and thinks it will help him as the new Dundee head former Scotland international succeeds Tony Docherty in the Dens Park dugout and was unveiled to the media for the first time since returning to Scotland earlier 51-year-old spent 12 years in England and paid particular focus to his stint with the Bees, adding it has given him a refined perspective."It was a great role in terms of education and understanding, and allowed me to form really strong relationships with personnel and get to know the players," he said."Sometimes when we go through the transition from being a player to manager, we forget the difficulties of being a player."Being a football player is a hard journey. There's so much vulnerability about it, there's so much disappointment, so much pressure around the job."Working with the players very closely reminds me of just how difficult that journey can be."It's really important that we have that type of culture within this club where you can be vulnerable, we are going to support each other and help each other, we are going to make you better."I want to be a manager where my players feel they can come to me and speak on issues that they have and they're not scared to do so. The role has allowed me to develop in that way. "It's allowed me to develop my softer side in many ways and hopefully that will benefit me."
The Herald Scotland
09-06-2025
- Sport
- The Herald Scotland
The national-team ticking time-bomb the SFA must do more to address
Regardless of who stands on the Hampden touchline, there's a time-bomb ticking under Scotland's national team. An international coach doesn't have the luxury of spending a few quid in the transfer market. And Clarke is cursed by a pool of goalkeepers, central defenders, wingers and strikers as shallow as a Pollokshields puddle. Unless that changes, the problem will plague his successor and every manager after that as well. The SFA have a plan to tackle the dearth of new and emerging talent. If it goes the same way as the think tanks of yesteryear, performances like that Hampden horlicks against Iceland will be the way of things in future. Study the current crop of players in the national team and Billy Gilmour, Kieran Tierney, Nathan Patterson, Aaron Hickey, Lewis Ferguson, Ben Doak, Andrew Robertson, John McGinn and Ryan Christie were all playing first-team football by the age of 18. That matters because kids in the tricky transition phase between 16 and 21 need to learn what the game's all about. And a thread on social media by Stenhousemuir assistant manager Brown Ferguson shows what a terrible job clubs in the SPFL Premiership are doing of bringing through talented footballers. In season 2021/22, the overall percentage of Scots starting games in the top flight was 45 per cent. This season, the figure dropped to 31.46 per cent. Just 41 of the 132 players who started Premiership games in an average week were Scottish. Depressingly, only four of that 132 were under the age of 21. Luka Modric made his first start at 17, Erling Haaland at 15, Martin Odegaard at 14 and Josip Gvardiol at 17. While no one should delude themselves that there's a Lamine Yamal hiding away in the Reserve League of the SPFL, no one knows for sure what's down there because academy players in Scotland have a limited chance of showing what they can do. Cursed by a lack of trust, managers don't feel they have the time or the breathing space to take a punt on the kids. And, given what happened to Tony Docherty, you can almost see their point. A report by the CIES football observatory shows that Dundee gave more minutes to players aged 21 and under than any other team in the Scottish Premiership this season. The Dens Park hierarchy are never slow to remind people how much they care about youth development. Yet sometimes it pays to study the actions and not the words. By blooding Lyall Cameron, Josh Mulligan, Luke Graham, Sebastian Palmer-Houlden, Olaswaseun Adewumi, Ethan Ingram, Finn Robson and Cesar Garza in the first team, Docherty effectively signed his own P45. Tony Docherty gave Lyall Cameron time to shine at Dundee (Image: Rob Casey - SNS Group) The minute the men upstairs realised their bright young things were knee high in the relegation brown stuff, they took fright and sacked him. Clubs can't have this both ways. They can't perform a song and dance about their record of fielding academy graduates on one hand. Then sack the manager who picked them with the other. Read more: Ferguson on how Scotland squad feel about Iceland debacle Iceland keeper tells Scotland rookie how to bounce back from errors They can't encourage managers with a fraction of the resources of Celtic and Rangers to pitch young players into the team. Then lose patience and replace them with Steven Pressley as soon as they hit a bit of turbulence. Contrast Docherty's fate with that of Stephen Robinson at St Mirren. Last season the Saints coached served up a pitiful 0.8 per cent of first-team minutes to players aged 21 or under. In mitigation Evan Mooney, 17, came off the bench eight times, claiming a terrific assist in a Paisley win over Rangers, then broke his foot. Another teenager, Callum Penman, was another who saw bits and bobs of first-team action. Give Robinson his due. Flooding the team with experienced, physical imports from clubs like Gillingham, Morecambe and Waterford seems to work. Fans couldn't give two hoots about the direct football or the lack of academy prospects in the team so long as they're storming the top six year after year. In a footballing utopia Robinson would blood Mooney and Penman in the first team and give them a chance to shine. In the real world managers see Docherty taking a bullet to the head in Dundee and make a subconscious note to avoid the same mistake. The pitiful plight of the Scotland national team is not the problem of Robinson or Derek McInnes or Jimmy Thelin. In a landscape where the average tenure of a Scottish Premiership coach is 12.75 months, they've enough on their plate simply hanging on to their job. Responsibility for fixing this mess falls, as it should, on the shoulders of the SFA. There's not much they can do about the production line of talented young players being lured south at the age of 16 by big signing-on fees. Overseen by chief football officer Andy Gould and head of men's elite strategy Chris Docherty, club cooperation agreements might do something to address the lack of a first-team pathway. From June 16, three players at a time can flit between Rangers and Raith Rovers or, say, Aberdeen and Cove with flexibility. Players with promise will go down to the lower leagues and learn how to mix it with grown men. For some the experience will be a triumph, for others a disaster. However it pans out they'll learn more from a brief taste of life in the real world they ever will holed up in the pampered never-land of a club academy An initiative worth the effort, cooperation agreements should be part of a package of measures. Not the only one. As things stand the Governing Body Appeal system awards too many work permits to average overseas players. They could look at that for a start. The SFA are also in the process of handing applications for millions of pounds in Pitching Up facilities funding from some of the nation's top clubs. That cash really should be conditional on those clubs agreeing to blood a quota of young players in the first team. No minutes, no money. By hook or by crook, the SFA need to fix this. If they can't, the Tartan Army can look forward to more Ciaran Slickers being slung in to a lion's den they're hopelessly unprepared for. With predictable results.
