Dundee Utd: Thomas Courts on 'collateral damage', karaoke & buying the coffees
- Published
Thomas Courts earned his first Premiership victory with a 1-0 win over Rangers at Tannadice
Thomas Courts looks like a football manager. There's the tailored training kit, for a start. The confident fist bump, self-assured eye contact and easy rapport. But the 39-year-old doesn't sound like one. Or at least not one sprung from the familiar mould of the Scottish game.
Talk of pathways, skillsets and networks is not only unusual, it tends to make traditionalists bristle. "Who's this character? What's he ever done in the game? Bet he's got a laptop..."
Courts has heard it all. The son of a Fife mining village, he still lives in the kingdom, is still around those who knew him in his days as a young professional at Livingston, who tracked his career in the juniors, and remember well his successes at Kelty Hearts. He is far from an idealist insulated from the blood and slavers of Scottish football.
Put it to the "workaholic" 39-year-old Dundee United head coach that he has emerged without any hinterland in the game, and he points to "the collateral damage" he has left behind him. The things he has sacrificed to get to where he is now. The broken promises. The arguments. The missed birthdays and family occasions.
A father of four children ranging from 19 to five months, Courts says he has "made decisions that put people around me under pressure". Decisions such as quitting his job to work full-time at Kelty on a part-time wage and spending time away from home at West Ham, Sheffield United and NAC Breda in the Netherlands.
"When you're involved in football and as single-minded as me, you need understanding from your family," he says, paying tribute, in particular, to partner Sammy. "You make career decisions that don't make sense and seem impulsive. But when you have belief in yourself, you take those chances.
"People think I've just come out of nowhere, but that's not been the case at all. I've committed so much to being a manager because I had an insatiable desire. Everything I've done over the past five years have been a sizeable investment in getting here and I think this is only the start of the journey."
Management is 'bit like singing karaoke'
It was a journey that truly began upon Courts' release from Livingston at the age of 21. A four-year stint in West Lothian yielded five senior appearances but no real sense of what he might do with his life, other than drop into the junior ranks.
But his football connections in Fife - the first of his networks - not only helped him start his lengthy association with Kelty, but also a job with the recruitment company owned by Ian Campbell, brother and assistant to Arbroath manager Dick.
A few years "honing my business expertise" led to Courts joining a global learning and development company, before he decided to fully focus on football. A rake of trophies and promotion followed at Kelty but were only accompanied by unappealing offers from higher divisions, which made the Fifer realise he needed to go in a different direction to get to his desired destination.
United slipped to defeat in their Scottish Premiership opener at Aberdeen
Stints in England and the Netherlands fulfilled that and earned him a full-time academy appointment at United in February 2020, with Courts happy thrashing away in the background until Covid thrust an unexpected opportunity his way last December. "I got a text one night saying I might be needed to help the manager with the first team the next day..." he begins.
Within half an hour of arriving at the training ground in St Andrews, Courts was left in charge, manager Micky Mellon and his coaching staff all having been sent home to isolate. "There was no time to think," he says. "It's a bit like singing karaoke - you have that fear, but as soon as you've done it, you're looking for the next song."
Courts took charge of a 2-0 defeat at Livingston a few days later and it was only after that game that he was able to think about what had happened.
"It made me realise that is where I wanted to be, because I felt like everything inside me came alive again." he says. "I think I'd been supressing it before. I thought 'if I can work in a first-team setting with these distractions, imagine what I can do with a blank canvass'.
"I knew I needed to speak to the club about what I wanted to do next, and that would probably be away from United."
'Very quickly, fans will relate to this team'
Or perhaps not. Mellon's departure had become increasingly inevitable after a satisfactory but stultifying season but so, too, had Courts' promotion in his place.
The United manager insists the first he heard of it was once the position was vacated in May and that he went through a thorough interview process. But he also understands why supporters were - and still are - alarmed by how things have unfolded.
"I could see the perceived risk," he says. "I'd never seen anyone else go from the academy to the first team and I didn't think it was possible. But I realised very quickly I've got to back myself. My track record at Kelty tells me I'm more than capable of doing this job, albeit this is a whole new level."
With the furore in mind, Courts' first act was to come off social media. His second was to meet every member of his squad one-to-one to get to know them and their ambitions. "It was a big investment to get around 24-25 players - whether it was one hour or four - but I'm really glad I did," he says.
That investment stretched to buying the coffees but Courts feels he will be paid back by the personal connection and respect it will have bought him. "Do I expect that to win us points every Saturday? Of course not," he says. "But it gives us a depth to our relationship and it helps build the right environment."
Nothing builds that as well as results, though. The Premiership season started badly, with an abject defeat at Aberdeen. Passive, meek and unadventurous, it captured all the worst traits of United from last term.
But United responded with a ferocious performance to administer Rangers' first league defeat in 17 months. That display was everything that the Pittodrie performance wasn't, and backed with deed Courts' words from earlier in the week. It was then followed by progression to the League Cup quarter-finals - albeit after penalties - against Ayr United.
"We've been having to help the players rediscover their instincts on the pitch," says Courts. "We took a bloody nose at Aberdeen but very quickly this team will be high-energy, brave, with young players getting an opportunity and the fans will be able to relate to it.
"It's going to be bumpy at times but this is a group who did okay in the league last year and we want to improve vastly. It will take a few weeks to get up to speed and once we do, we'll see a lot of growth in this team."