This is the complete Times articleThe Times/Patrick BarclayAugust 22, 2009
Snobbery denies Adrian Boothroyd chance to promote himself
Mistaken perception of former Watford manager as favouring the long-ball game hampering his attempt to find work
- Patrick Barclay Chief Football Commentator
Now that Norwich City have appointed a manager, Paul Lambert, whose former club, Colchester United, had shocked them with a 7-1 defeat at Carrow Road, does Owen Coyle become the favourite to succeed Sir Alex Ferguson?
Burnley’s 1-0 triumph over Manchester United was certainly the gasp-inducer of the week and Ferguson seemed so short of explanation that he could only come up with its having been “written in the stars”. He used the phrase more appositely when United beat Chelsea on penalties in the Champions League final 50 years after the Munich air disaster. If the stars work in half-century cycles, watch Burnley, because next spring it will be 50 years since they won the championship.
Those days have gone. Those were days when a club could get into the top division and take the title straight away; Arthur Rowe’s push-and-run Tottenham Hotspur had in 1950-51 and Alf Ramsey’s Ipswich Town were to do so in 1961-62 and Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest in 1977-78. Now they emerge from a different league with a different sponsor and a sense of inferiority that only a minority — such as Stoke City under Tony Pulis last season — can conquer.
Adrian Boothroyd did his best with Watford in 2006-07, but they won only five matches after being denied the sort of morale boost Burnley got on Wednesday. It was August and United came to Vicarage Road. “They were not at their best,” Boothroyd said. “And we were — as we had to be. Although United took the lead, Ashley Young got behind their defence and set up the equaliser for Damien Francis. Then one of our lads passed back to a defender who wasn’t ready for it and Ryan Giggs slipped in the winner.”
Watford returned to the Coca-Cola Championship. But Young had caught Aston Villa’s eye. Ben Foster also left, to return to United. Boothroyd lost others and soon had a team little better than the one he had taken over in 2005 (they were in the lower reaches). Nine months ago he lost his job and is still available, despite having been interviewed by four clubs looking for the promotion he so impressively organised three years ago.
Unemployment must be a stiff test of any sense of humour, but
Boothroyd’s survives, as his tale of one experience with a prospective employer demonstrates. “I was asked to meet the chairman, who sat me down, said he’d been very impressed by my work at Watford and offered me the job,” he said.
“ ‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘There’s a few things I’d like to discuss first.’ He asked what. I said I’d like to talk to the owner about a variety of things — including who picks the team. He told me not to worry, everything would be fine. So we shook hands on it.
“Two weeks later I turned on Sky and there was someone else with the club scarf held above his head. Apparently, the chairman had offered the job to about five or six of us. It was just as well we didn’t all turn up on the same day.”At Reading, he did not make the last three. At West Brom, he did not make the last two. At Swansea, he reached the last two, but the board chose Paulo Sousa. And he knows a long-ball stigma is not helping his chances.
Just like Graham Taylor, another lower-division full back who was to advance his managerial career at Watford (Boothroyd, a Yorkshireman, played mostly for Huddersfield Town before injury finished him at 26), he has been stereotyped as someone who believes that progression through technique is something you kick the ball over.
Yet you ask him about technique and he said: “My attitude is quite simple. I don’t think there are enough players in the English game who can receive the ball and pass forward, who can dribble and run and exploit space in front of them, especially at Championship level or below.” That could be Sir Trevor Brooking talking.
But at Watford he had to discover the best way of winning with the players he inherited and could afford to recruit. “To me that’s what coaching is about,” he said.
It does not imply a dogmatic philosophy. Challenge Boothroyd to illustrate his taste in football — I love doing that to people — and instantly he is back in 1982, reliving the great World Cup match in which Paolo Rossi’s hat-trick gave Italy a 3-2 win over Brazil. He drools over Falcão’s goal; his feelings are for Telê Santana’s beautiful but doomed Brazilians. This is no philistine. When he thinks of 1986, he does not curse Diego Maradona but celebrates his dribbling.
Boothroyd even has good taste in football books because his new all-time favourite is Jonathan Wilson’s masterly history of tactics, Inverting The Pyramid. Boothroyd has not done enough yet to feature in the index, but I looked up Taylor and Wilson is clearly sympathetic to the view that opposition to his tactics at Watford in the early 1980s involved the dreadful combination of ignorance and snobbery that Boothroyd, let’s hope, can overcome.
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/columnists/patrick_barclay/article6805870.ece
