Shirtliff bringing a wealth of experience

Jul 11 2007 by Nick Hilton, Liverpool Daily Post

THE chemistry bubbles and crackles between the two men who will guide Tranmere Rovers’ footballing fortunes over the forthcoming League One season.

Ronnie Moore and Peter Shirtliff had not been close friends before they formed the management team at Prenton Park this summer. But they are long-time football acquaintances who know each other well from years of regular contact on the scouting circuit – two men with long histories, deep knowledge of the game and supply of memories that are exchanged with relish.

This interview with Shirtliff, conducted in the shared manager’s office at Prenton Park, sometimes lapsed into banter between Moore and his new assistant.

Such as when the subject moved on to the managers they served under during their playing days – and in particular the playing styles those managers of yesterday would impose.

“At Sheffield Wednesday we were very direct under Howard Wilkinson,” Shirtliff remembered.

“How did you find Lennie Lawrence?” Moore asked.

“He was a bit in between, liked to play a bit of football as well,” Shirtliff replied.

“Not when I was playing for him at Charlton,” Moore came back. “I went there as a centre-forward and ended up playing centre-half. He told me that if he saw me messing around with the ball at the back, I would be sat next to him on the bench for the next game, no danger.”

Shirtliff responded with a grain. He said: “Ron Atkinson was the opposite, unbelievable. He would tell you to get the ball off the keeper and pass it through. He was just total football. He used to join in training at Sheffield Wednesday – and he was hopeless to be fair.”

Moore: “Ron was hopeless as a player. I can remember him, a big flabby centre-half.”

Shirtliff: “But he loved his teams to play football and he always found good players.”

Moore: “Yes he did, good players, good football.”

Moore was obliged to look for a new assistant this summer when John Breckin, his work partner of the last 10 years, took a job with hometown club Rotherham for family reasons.

Shirtliff at 46 is a little younger than his new manager, although old enough to have played against Moore “a long time ago.”

Shirtliff’s playing days covered more than 600 games for Sheffield Wednesday (in two spells), Charlton, Wolves and Barnsley.

A strong and composed defender, Shirtliff’s early memories are of playing under the guidance of Jack Charlton at Hillsborough.

“For a young player like me Jack was a massive personality,” Shirtliff recalls. “He was very off-the-cuff – but could be quite inspirational times.

“Howard Wilkinson, who followed him was very organised and the style was direct of course. Then there was Trevor Francis, who wanted to play football. He was very tough on his strikers, though.”

Shirtliff later played under the former England manager Graham Taylor at Wolves in the 1990s.

He hung up his boots in 1997 and worked as a coach with Dave Bassett at Leicester and Barnsley.

Shirtliff said: “Every one of the managers I worked for had a different approach. They were all their own men and their quality shone through. But there were also some common themes in the way they worked.

“The bottom line for me is that good football is winning football. If your team are scoring goals you have to be doing something right.”

Shirtliff says he prolonged his playing career for as long as he could before moving into coaching. He held both Leicester and Barnsley achieve promotion from the Championship to the Premiership. “They were happy days,” he remembers.

When the time came to manage in his own right at Mansfield in October 2005, he was ready for the challenge – although the opportunity, initially in a caretaker capacity, came out of the blue. Shirtliff was working as number two at Field Mill when the manager, Carlton Palmer, announced his resignation live on the air in a radio interview following a game.

“I had no idea it Carlton was going to do it,” Shirtliff recalls. “He felt he was under a bit of pressure and the fans were giving him some stick. He just came out with the fact that he was quitting.

“There was a bit of turmoil at the club at the time and it was affecting everyone. I was thrust into the job. There was no time to prepare. I thought I had to make a few changes and try to settle things down.

“The fans quietened down a little bit and after an indifferent start, we managed to get some results together.”

Shirtliff lifted Mansfield away from the bottom of the table and clear of the threat of relegation. He looks back on his 15 months as Field Mill and says: “I felt I did a good job there.”

Meanwhile, Tranmere are in line to receive an initial windfall of just over £150,000 after Jason Koumas completed a £4.6 million-plus move from West Bromwich Albion to Wigan Athletic last night.

Rovers negotiated a sale-on clause with Albion when Koumas left Prenton Park for the West Midlands in 2002, entitling them to 15% of any transfer fee exceeding £3.5 million. Koumas’s move to the JJB Stadium could be worth as much as £5.3 million – with the extra £700,000 dependent upon senior appearances and Wigan’s Premiership status.