Kevin Thomson will play his first game under Gordon Strachan today, ten years after first being under his management at Coventry City. Chief Football Writer Paul Fraser finds out how the £2m man ended up on Teesside.

WHEN the call came, Kevin Thomson was right to think twice about moving to Middlesbrough. He had tried pursuing a career in England once before, only to develop a severe case of homesickness just six months in to a four-year deal.

This time, however, he is confident things will be different. Thomson was, after all, only 16 when he chose to return to the Scottish borders, citing to Coventry City that personal reasons and missing his family had led to his decision.

Older and wiser, the 25-yearold is trying his luck again with Gordon Strachan, ironically the same manager in charge during his short time with the Sky Blues at the turn of the Millennium.

Strachan has few memories of the young man from Peebles from that time, but Thomson’s recollection of his run-ins are more vivid.

Occasionally a team of Coventry staff, including the fiery Scotland legend, would take on a youth team. Over the years Thomson has let it be known “Gordon was unbelievable, I marked him one game and he nut-megged me three times.”

Strachan’s 53-year-old legs are not the same as they were then, so maybe Thomson feels the same won’t happen to him again at Rockliffe Park. More likely, aided with more experience and a shorter travel time home, Thomson is just hungrier for another crack at English football.

“It’s far easier to come to Teesside now than it was going to Coventry then,”

said Thomson, who has been living in Edinburgh since joining Hibernian seven years ago.

“I have a few more years behind me, a family and it’s only Edinburgh to just south of the border, I’m from the borders as well, where my mam and dad still live, so I’m sure I can cope!

“Unfortunately I never settled when I was at Coventry, I got a bit homesick and decided to come back up the road.

That’s when I signed for the Hibees at 16.”

It might have been a forgettable six months off the pitch for Thomson at Coventry, but it was his first taste of what life would be like at a top British club.

“I was at Coventry when Gordon was the manager and Gary McAllister, Boro’s first team coach, was there as a player,” said Thomson. “I have never spoken to the manager much about it since I have moved to Middlesbrough.

“I was only a young boy then. The season I was at Coventry they were in the Premier League, it was a great experience. My goal was to become a first team player and Gary was one of the big stars at the time.

“The gaffer gave it a right go to stay in the Premier League.

They had some big names then, like Robbie Keane. I didn’t know any of them, I wasn’t training with any of the first team, but it was still an experience that has helped me along the way.”

With a deal quickly struck with Hibernian, his departure from Coventry was smooth. A weight had been lifted off his shoulders and it was a relief to be nearer to his parents’ home on the Scottish borders.

It was almost as if he was back in his comfort zone, returning to the area where he was such a huge success in youth football with his cousin, Aberdeen’s Steve MacLean.

After starring for Peebles Thistle in his high school days, it was the period he played for the reputable Hutchison Vale of Edinburgh that alerted Coventry.

Vale are Edinburgh’s equivalent to Tyneside’s Wallsend Boys Club or Teesside’s Marton, producing Scotland internationals Kenny Miller and Allan McGregor over the years, so to head back to that area was seamless.

The input of his family, particularly his parents Alan and Liz, clearly kept him focused on reviving a burgeoning career that could have come crashing down around him after his unsuccessful spell at Coventry.

But given the way Alan had spent years playing in the lower Scottish leagues with Berwick Rangers and Meadowbank Thistle, his son drew in the advice of his father, which helped him to make a success of his next stop.

When he formally signed terms with Hibernian in August 2001, he emerged from the Academy with the likes of Scott Brown, Steven Whittaker, Derek Riordan and Garry O’Connor. To this day he still feels a debt of gratitude to Bobby Williamson, the manager who made him a regular two seasons later.

By the time he recovered from a serious cruciate knee ligament injury sustained at the end of the 2003-04 campaign, which kept him out of action for a year, Williamson had gone and Tony Mowbray installed.

“Bobby has to take a lot of the credit for what he did with a lot of us, but the best years of my time were under Tony Mowbray at Easter Road,” said Thomson.

Mowbray, the former Middlesbrough captain that went on to manage West Brom and Celtic before being sacked after six months at Parkhead last January, won the manager of the year in Scotland after finishing top four in his first two seasons.

“I got on really well with Tony,” said Thomson, whose performances at the heart of the Rangers midfield last season contributed to Mowbray’s demise at Celtic.

“On one hand it was great to see him not succeed at Celtic because it meant we were successful at Rangers, but on the other I have the utmost respect for him and I found it hard to believe how he was treated in Scotland and how things did not turn out.

“When he was appointed I was one of the players who was a bit wary, I thought he would do a good job there.

Unfortunately he is in the position he is in and I’m sure he will rekindle his career because he is still a top manager.”

It will be four years in January since Thomson was sold by Hibernian for £2m, when Walter Smith persuaded him to head for Ibrox instead of down to the Premier League, where a number of clubs including Charlton were interested.

His first appearance was a 3-1 win over Kilmarnock, in which new Boro team-mate Kris Boyd scored all three, and Thomson is confident the two Rangers old-boys can help turn Middlesbrough into a force in the Championship this season. The Premier League is their sole aim.

“Our names were linked a few months ago but it was not until shortly before we moved that we talked about Middlesbrough with each other,” said Thomson. “I asked him if he thought it was the right club to get in to the Premier League and he had liked what he had seen and believed it was.

“He gave me the assurance I was looking for. I wasn’t too sure initially, I didn’t really want to play in the Championship. In the end you have to weigh up things for yourself and it was an easy decision once I had seen the set up.”

With Thomson and Boyd just two of an eight-strong group to have made the switch from the Scottish Premier League to Teesside in the last six months, the influx from north of the border has made the settling in process smoother. Even if the manager used to operate on the green half of Glasgow.

“It does help. There’s obviously a time in your career when you are forced to make decisions and the one I had to make was difficult,”

said Thomson. “I had to consider all of the factors and knowing so many of the boys already, knowing the manager knew so much about me, helped.

“It was nice to come to a club where I had played against the manager for a few seasons. He was on the other side of the Old Firm, which is strange, but that’s football.

“Gary McAllister, Garry Pendrey, Jim Blyth are all here as well. It has helped to settle down quickly. The first thing is you need to settle and then everything falls in to place. Fingers crossed we can have a right good go.”