John Barnes and Jason McAteer are the new management team at Tranmere Rovers

Jun 17 2009 by Our Correspondent, Birkenhead News

AS team-mates they were known as Digger and Trigger. But John Barnes and Jason McAteer breezed into Prenton Park on Monday keen to make new names for themselves.

Tranmere's new management team was finally unveiled, 10 days after the sacking of Ronnie Moore.

And Barnes is keen for Rovers fans not to have any preconceived ideas about his style of management.

“I don't want to be seen as a trophy manager,” he said.

“I know what I am, and I am just like any other League One manager. The fact that I may have played at the highest level and been the type of player I am, people may have a misconception of the type of coach I want to be.

“I will be a manager who insists on hard work, discipline, desire and commitment from my team.

“Unfortunately people think you have to be a defensive midfielder or a hard-tackling centre-back to have those ethics.

“When a flair player becomes a manager people think he has to have players of a certain quality to succeed.

“But the type of manager I am – and was all the way back to my Celtic days – is not the type of player I was.

“The fact that I have played for Liverpool and England is out of the window. I am not bringing any of that here.

“Togetherness, spirit and organisation. These are the qualities we need here.

“The type of player I was carries no water whatsoever.

“I hope people don't look at my name, I hope they just look at what I am doing to help the team go forward.”

As if to cite his willingness to go back to basics, from all the managers he has worked under Barnes plucked out his old Watford mentor Graham Taylor as the man whose work might help him most at Prenton Park.

“You take something from every manager you have ever worked with, but you are also keen to impress your own personality,” he added.

“But Graham Taylor will probably be the biggest influence on me right now because I am at Tranmere.

“Other managers I have worked with have not worked down at this level and their philosophy was not what was necessary at this level.

“Kenny Dalglish with Liverpool, Bobby Robson and Terry Venables with England were at a different level. But Graham Taylor did it with Watford at this level.

“He got his principles across, and not necessarily with the best players. I do believe you don't need the best players to be successful.”

Barnes has signed a two-year deal at Prenton Park, but inherits a squad of just 11 players with first team experience.

Influential skipper Antony Kay has joined Huddersfield, goalkeeper John Achterberg has joined the backroom staff at Liverpool and with Danny Coyne one of half-a-dozen senior players out of contract, Rovers don't even have a first choice goalkeeper on the books for next season.

“Getting players in is a big factor,” Barnes admitted. “Players have been released and looking at the squad it is quite thin.

“We are not able to sign players for high wages or for transfer fees, which is fine. In this day and age a lot of clubs are using loan signings and getting players in on free transfers – and that's the route we're going to have to go down.

“But I think getting a playing structure on board in terms of a philosophy, a style and sense of how we want to play is the most important factor. We need to get that down early.

“Throughout all the leagues, the teams who can organise themselves, get a style across that the players understand, are successful. We have to create an environment which the players are used to and which will bring out the best in them.

“My football philosophy is a very simple way of playing. Obviously you have to implement something the players can actually do. If I ask them to play like Real Madrid, or do things that Paul Gascoigne could do, it possibly wouldn't work.

“But I took lessons from my time at Jamaica, where we had players of similar quality. If you organise them, and get them playing in a similar role, without making things too complicated, you can be consistent. That is the name of the game for 90 per cent of the teams – consistency.”