Whilst first team boss, Aidy Boothroyd has quite rightly recently been receiving plenty of media acclaim for his sterling efforts in transforming Watford into genuine automatic promotion contenders, one of his trusty lieutenants has remained steadfastly in the background.
Those of you old enough to remember the fabulously entertaining Tottenham Hotspur team of the early eighties, featuring cultured footballers such as Glen Hoddle, Ossie Ardiles and Ricky Villa, will need no reminding that Keith Burkinshaw was the man at the White Hart Lane helm during those heady days.
Many years later, a much older and perhaps wiser Burkinshaw is now plying his trade at Vicarage Road, forging an instantly successful, if perhaps unlikely partnership with Boothroyd.
But the pair knew each other prior to their coming together at Watford as Burkinshaw, speaking exclusively to www.leaguemanagers.com explains,
“I was his mentor when he was doing his football management course (Certificate of Applied Management at Warwick Business School) and to a certain extent I still am. I take the odd training session, not many. I'm at every training session so I know what's going on. We discuss things everyday. Of course, I've got an opinion, as does Dave Hockaday, who's with the first team. That's one of his strengths, he listens to other people and makes his mind up after that.
“Aidy's a terrific man manager, all the players respect him, he's very good out on the field as well, as a coach. He loves doing it. He's got bags of enthusiasm and bags of energy. He's one of these guys that never leaves a stone unturned if he feels he can get something out of it which is going to be to the clubs advantage. The fact that he's only 35 and he's got a couple of players around that age, could cause difficulties but he just handles them really, really well. He can be strong when he needs to be and can tone it down, when he doesn't need to be as strong about things. He just seems to have the happy knack of getting it right as far as man management is concerned.
“Also, he really has kept the players on their toes all season. When we'd done reasonably well up to Christmas people said the bubble would burst and we'd not keep it going, but he's taken every match and made a lot of it and pretty much got results from every game. That's the way he does it, we just look at each match as it comes along and get the best result possible.”
Interview reproduced courtesy of www.leaguemanagers.com
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