Dundee’s new coaching roles laid out with attack and defence remits revealed

By Gbam Godwin On Jul 10, 2025

Dundee’s new coaching roles laid out with attack and defence remits revealed.

Barry Nicholson, a former Scotland midfielder, has been named the Dark Blues’ assistant coach.

Steven Pressley says that the excellent calibre of candidates made selecting his new Dundee assistant a challenging affair.

But he’s happy to have Barry Nicholson as his new Dundee No 2 and has unveiled the new backroom structure at Dens Park.

Nicholson, a former Rangers, Dunfermline, and Aberdeen midfielder, began working with Dundee on Tuesday after more than a decade of coaching.

The majority of that time was spent at Fleetwood Town, where he briefly worked under Pressley before joining Queen’s Park as Callum Davidson’s assistant.

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Nicholson has ‘evolved enormously’

Pressley has been pleased to watch Nicholson’s tutoring style evolve since their previous collaboration.

“I’ve got to say that I really enjoyed the process,” he remarked of finding a new assistant. “We ended up interviewing four individuals, all of whom were of quite high quality. I mean it.

New Dundee assistant coach Barry Nicholson. Image: David Young

“The one thing it reaffirmed for me was that there are so many young, educated coaches out there nowadays. “I was quite impressed with the quality of coaching and detail.

“I worked with Barry eight years ago, and just by chatting with him and seeing his presentation on the issues that we needed, he’s grown tremendously. “Even in the day and a half that he’s been here, I can tell he’s grown tremendously. I’m quite satisfied.

“I think he has a pretty excellent rapport with people and players. “Connections are, of course, one of the most important factors, but he also has a lot of knowledge and real-world experience as an assistant coach.” “When I joined Fleetwood, Barry was the development coach.

“He has good experience in that area, and I promoted him to the first squad at the beginning of the second season.

“I left from my post two weeks before the season began, so I never had the opportunity to work with him on a daily basis.

“But as I’ve said he really impressed in the interview and he’s evolved a lot.”

Attack and defence roles revealed

In addition to Nicholson, Pressley hired Glen Johnson as goalkeeping coach and promoted Scott Paterson from first-team coach.

When asked about the reasoning behind the decision, Pressley stated: “I want a highly collaborative approach. “Barry will be primarily accountable for the offensive principles and will place a strong emphasis on them.

Dundee assistant Scott Paterson. Image: SNS

“Scott will focus heavily on the team’s defensive concepts. “[Technical manager] David Longwell will have a foot in both camps while focussing on the individual development of the players within them. “I wanted a collaborative approach.

I didn’t want anyone to get ahead of the others, so we all worked together to accomplish success. “It was brought to my attention that Scott’s title would differ slightly from Nicholson’s.” That is not what I wanted. “I wanted a clear collaborative approach.”