Houston, we have a problem

Dundee United have had three successive top-four finishes under his stewardship.  They also won the 2010 Scottish Cup.  They;ve been in the Europa League in each of the last three seasons.

Most SPL clubs can only dream of that level of success.

So why does it feel like Peter Houston is increasingly unwelcome at Tannadice?

On the face of it, you would think that United, and their supporters, would be pretty satisfied with the job he's done.  Yet the 54 year old's contract expires at the end of the campaign, and there appear to be only tentative signs of a new deal for a man who joined the club as assistant manager to Craig Levein in October 2006, and who has been manager since December 2009.  The prospect of him moving on does not seem to cause much in the way of panic; chairman Stephen Thompson was so keen to acquiesce to a potential approach from Blackpool that you'd be forgiven for wondering if he had actually telephoned the English club to offer them his employee.  (Subsequently, it has emerged that Blackpool had little or no interest in Houston and are actually chasing MK Dons boss Karl Robinson).

And are fans of the Tangerines raging over the prospect of losing such a successful coach?  Going by Twitter and internet forums, Arabs are at best showing ambivalence; at worst, there have been dozens of offers from supporters to personally chauffeur Houston down to Blackpool.  It's quite a contrast with the reaction of Inverness Caledonian Thistle, and their fans, to the news that Terry Butcher was in talks with Barnsley - the departure of arguably Scotland's most popular Englishman would have led to much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Depending on whether you count his time as caretaker-manager, Houston is either the longest or the second-longest serving (after Butcher) manager in the Scottish Premier League.  Yet his relationship with Dundee United has never felt even remotely as close as Butcher's with Inverness, and certainly does not compare with the bond between Stephen Thompson's late father and predecessor as chairman, Eddie, and Craig Levein.  From the beginning, it felt like a marriage of convenience; when Levein departed for the Scotland job, the first choice for the role was actually Pat Fenlon, now in charge at Hibs - but compensation could not be agreed with the Irishman's club.  So Houston continued as caretaker, results were generally decent - they could hardly get any worse than his first match in charge, a 7-1 shellacking at Ibrox - and after disposing of Rangers in the quarter-finals of the Scottish Cup, the draw opened up beautifully so victories over Raith and Ross County were all that were required to bring silverware to the City of Discovery.

At this point, it's worth reminding ourselves of the first choice starting lineup on the day of the final: Pernis, Kovacevic, Webster, Kenneth, Dixon, Swanson, Buaben, Gomis, Conway, Goodwillie, Daly.  How many of those eleven are still at the club?  Just Jon Daly.  It's reasonable to claim that, of the other ten, only Mihael Kovacevic did not leave for 'better things'.

That's a lot of turnover in two and a half years.  All six of the Scottish players have, since then, been capped at least once (though Garry Kenneth is still recovering from the trauma of his sole international appearance.)

Yet, under Houston's stewardship, Dundee United finished third in the SPL a year later.  Despite this, a poor start last season led to rumours that his job was insecure only a few months into the campaign; United recovered to finish fourth in the table.  Another summer of cost-cutting followed, with first team regulars such as Dusan Pernis, Gary Kenneth, Paul Dixon, Robbie Neilson, Danny Swanson and Scott Robertson exiting.  The replacements looked decent on paper, yet have failed to live up to expectations - midfielders Mark Millar and Michael Gardyne have surprisingly struggled to make the step up from the first division, Brian McLean appears a shadow of the centre-back who used to play for Motherwell, Rudi Skacel is more pre-occupied with how he used to play for Hearts than how he currently plays for Dundee United, and the less said about Gregory Vignal the better.  Add in the perenially-injured Gary Mackay-Steven and it's not hard to see why they are eighth in the table.

The cost-cutting doesn't just cover the playing squad, and this may be one of the big issues regarding Houston's future.  He's certainly on a high salary compared to his peers - the more outrageous estimates claim it to be £200,000 a year.  His chairman has made no secret of how he would have to take a wage cut, though negotiating through the press seems tactless at best and disresepctful at worse.  Not that the manager is exempt from this criticism - a thinly-veiled plea via the press for a new contract back in September was unfortunately followed a few days later by a 4-0 thumping in Inverness, and when he did the same thing in December, his players promptly blew a 3-0 lead at home to the same opponents.  Talk about bad timing.

Maybe it's just that the team have gone stale under his stewardship - though given that the turnover of players is such that only Sean Dillon, Jon Daly and Steve Banks are left from the first team squad he took over, that seems a spurious argument; most of them haven't been around long enough to go stale.  Regardless, there's not a lot of love for Peter Houston from the Tangerine half of Dundee, it seems.  One wonders if a new contract, even at a reduced rate, would only delay the inevitable for a few more months.

L.