Plain-talking Yorkshireman is the perfect mentor

Few young coaches on the threshold of a management career could hope for a better mentor than Keith Burkinshaw.

That, for Adrian Boothroyd, is what could make the difference between success and failure as he steps up from coaching Leeds to managing Watford.

In moments of crisis, and there will be plenty, Boothroyd will turn to the plain-talking 68-year-old Yorkshireman who turned Tottenham into one of the most attractive and successful clubs in the eighties.

Burkinshaw was the manager who came closest to lifting Tottenham from the shadow of the great Bill Nicholson and his Double-winning side of 1961.

He was manager at White Hart Lane from 1976-84 and in that time engineered the sensational transfer of the Argentine World Cup-winning pair Ricardo Villa and Ossie Ardiles, won the FA Cup in 1981 and 1982 and the UEFA Cup in 1984.

He knows how to succeed and he's an advocate of attacking football. But, just as important, he understands the mechanics of management.

That is why the League Managers' Association have used him to groom young coaches and managers.

If you wanted a role model for a burgeoning football manager you couldn't do much better than pick Burkinshaw.

"He's done it all and he's done it properly," said Peter Shreeves, his one-time coaching assistant at Spurs. "He's a man of enormous integrity and he knows his way around professional football."

Burkinshaw has just returned with his wife Joyce from a holiday in Cape Town and may be thankful that he had a break before pitching himself into the fight to halt Watford's decline.

It is a challenge for him at this stage in his career but what is certain is that his vast experience will prove invaluable in assisting Boothroyd in his first job in management.

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