Dundee head coach Steven Pressley has signed a new 12-month rolling contract and joked he can now afford to move his wife back to Scotland.
Family move
Pressley said: “The feeling is that I can move my wife up for three weeks at least. No, I think that it's been a little bit of a problem for myself in terms of the uncertainty around being a football manager. There still is, of course, the signing of the contract doesn't change that, but you know, sometimes everybody thinks that football managers are these robust individuals that can navigate their way through anything. We’ve actually got our own issues and problems and at the end of the day, you miss your family enormously because it's quite a lonely job. With the stability of the contract, to be able to plan and get my wife up the road. It is really important and also for my children to be able to visit on a more regular basis. My son's still there (England) and my daughter will still stay down there although this will give her a place that she can come up and visit more regularly, but my wife's going to move up permanently. I haven't seen her for long periods of the season which is far from my ideal.”
He added: “So that from a purely personal perspective and the other thing is they're paying me a bit more money which, to be honest with you, I think I deserve because they weren't paying me very much. I was taking a lot of abuse and I'm thinking to myself why am I doing that for this small amount of money? So, you know, at least it rewards me a little bit more.”
Support system
The 52-year-old stayed with his mum a lot of the time last season. She was there to support him but admitted it was challenging for him not to have his wife and kids around him, especially when he was going through trickier times at the start of last season. Pressley acknowledged: “It's really difficult, and I'll be honest with you it's magnified when you're going through even harder periods because your family are really those that support you and you turn to all the time. Listen, my mother's been great for me, she has she's been such a support for me but people think that as managers you're just immune to it and we're not. We're as vulnerable as anybody else, we have to go through these periods, but your family almost love you unconditionally. They're the ones that you know, they only care about you and you miss them during those difficult periods.”
Commitment and season ahead
Pressley, who took up the Dens Park role last summer, believes it shows a commitment from both sides to keep Dundee forward. He navigated his team through the group stages of the Premier Sports Cup and they will open up their Premiership campaign against Celtic on Monday. Pressley knows how much of a challenge it will be with the increasing financial gulf increasing in the Scottish game. The former Scotland cap added: “I think it's a commitment from the club and a commitment from myself to move forward. I think that, one, it allows me to do that but two, when you talk about the kind of model that we're trying to create here the model requires a degree of stability. You guys know me, I think we've had a really challenging year coming up because I think we've got a lot of work to do. I think that we're in a better place in terms of the culture that we're trying to create the environment the players trust a little bit more than they did at the start. Trust's only built over a period of time and the staff, the staff will all know how we work now so these things are in place from this time last year which gives us a better base to build from.”
