HE was born in Derby, brought up in Washington and studied in North Carolina, so Dundee wasn’t, it is far to say, exactly the obvious location for Ian Harkes to further his professional football career.

The midfielder’s grandfather may have hailed from the City of Discovery and been a fan of the Tannadice club. Still, going from MLS franchise DC United to Premiership hopefuls United last year was quite a surreal switch.

The success of so many of his countrymen in Scotland at Rangers, who Harke will face once again this afternoon on Tayside, over the years perhaps persuaded him it was the right move.

“I definitely knew there were a lot of players that had a lot of success there,” he said. “I grew up watching Carlos Bocanegra, DaMarcus Beasley, Maurice Edu. They all had spells there and it’s good to see they did well.

“My agent actually brought a lot of them to Rangers, so I was definitely aware of how good a team they were and the platform they had in Europe. I work with Lyle Yorks of James Grant Sports Management.

“It’s exciting to see how many Americans have made their careers there and then gone on to other teams as well. It’s a huge club and it’s going to be a big ask against them.

“It wasn’t necessarily those players that stood out in my mind, but I knew players had come here and done well. Some of them had changed their game a little to play in a challenging league like this.

“I never got a chance to come over to the academy or anything like that. My focus was on getting into the academy at DC United, where I grew up, and then go to university after that.

“I was excited that we could make the jump up to the Premiership and extend that challenge to myself and the team.”

Harkes helped Mickey Mellon’s men give Celtic a serious scare at Tannadice back in August – only an Albian Ajeti goal with seven minutes remaining denied them a draw.

The former United States Under-20 player, the son of former Stars and Stripes captain John, is hoping United can do even better today and deal Steven Gerrard’s side their first defeat of the 2020/21 campaign.

“I think you want to be the team that does that,” he said. “We know how good a run they’re on right now, but we need to have the belief about us. We need to try to win games and take points off every team. It will be a tough task but we’re hoping we set ourselves up to be tough to beat.

“We really tried to get up high against Celtic and really put them under pressure at Tannadice. It might change a little bit. We know we have to be compact and be tough to break down.

“We’ll definitely have a game plan set up to be tough to break down and then go and hit them on the counter and try to attack that way.”

Harkes added: “At Ibrox, they really opened us up and broke us down (United lost 4-0 there in September). I think we learned our lessons. Hopefully we come out with a different approach this time and are hard to break down.

“They’re very good in all parts of the pitch and we have to be good with the ball when it turns over and try to create chances for ourselves to relieve the pressure. If you make mistakes, they can punish you. We’ll definitely be careful about that coming into this game.”