Tony Asghar believes Dundee United’s partnership with Fulham is almost ready to bear fruit.
United announced their collaboration, centred around player and coach development, with the newly promoted Cottagers in January.
The Tangerines sporting director has revealed work behind the scenes – which has been ongoing since before the link-up went public – is progressing well.
And fans could soon see the benefit first hand, when players start to move between the clubs.
“These partnerships can often be a bit of a fluff piece but this has been working for a long time before we announced it,” said Asghar.
🏆 FULHAM ARE CROWNED CHAMPIONS AT CRAVEN COTTAGE! 🏆
Just LOOK at the scenes 🤩 pic.twitter.com/NQyYfUoSwp
— Sky Sports Football (@SkyFootball) May 2, 2022
“One of the directors of Fulham has been up, their director of football has been up as has their academy director.
“We have been down there and shared a lot of common practices in how we are going to move forward.
“From a football perspective we are looking at high performance. Can we get players from there who could come into our environment?
“Dundee United have an opportunity on Scotland that we can get players in that they can’t in England.
“There’s now a pathway for us to look at players they can’t get and we can. We can look at loans and various other aspects.”
Both clubs are American-owned, with Mark Ogren in control of United and Shahid Khan providing the financial muscle at Fulham
It’s a shared trait that isn’t lost on Asghar.
And the Tangerines’ chief is sure that, in time, the two clubs will have even more in common – as United will with their other partner outfits.
“With Fulham, I like the identity. It’s an American owned club who has another sports franchise,” said Asghar.
“He has built a club that has just been promoted, as we were a few years ago. There are a lot of synergies.
“There are good people at Fulham. From Alistair Macintosh the director of football or Huw Jennings.
“We are going to grow it. There were a few players we were going to bring in during the January window from there but things didn’t work out so.
“It will be fruitful and we will work hard at that within our partnerships.
“A simplistic view is to look at players and say there will be a clear partnership trading model.
“Andy Goldie has been down with Mike Cave, their academy director, looking at a lot of intertwining between how they work and how we work.
“We brought a goalkeeping coach in on secondment from Southampton, Ryan Flood. That worked really well so there may be opportunities for some of our staff to go down there.
“We have the partnership with Northern Virginia, Brian Welsh’s team, where we hope to send over two players and a coach this season.
“Things take time. They aren’t instantaneous on results.
“We need to build it and I feel positive we will have good results.”
Conversation