Northampton Town: Character the top skill for busy boss Boothroyd
Cobblers V Burton Albion. Aidy Boothroyd and Andy King.
UNTIL the close of business on Tuesday afternoon, most of Aidy Boothroyd’s thoughts are going to be dominated by recruitment.
That’s the time when the January transfer window will close and no permanent additions can be made to his squad.
It is not quite the ‘final chapter’ it might be for a manager working in the high-pressure situation of trying to add quality players to a team battling for their Football League existence.
Seven days after the deadline passes, the option to draft players in on loan becomes available to Boothroyd and his contemporaries.
It has been a frantic window for the boss, and a number of names have been made public of players whose deals have not quite come off.
There are dozens of others whose identities will not have come out, and in the case of every one of them, Boothroyd will have placed a single attribute top of his list of requirements, and that is character.
“I would consider the non-league route,” he said. “I’ve been to a lot of non-league games in the past five or so weeks to look at players and there are good players out there.
“But they are all at clubs and those clubs are looking to get the best money possible for those players.
“You need a mixture and I think the thing that is paramount for any group of players is that you recruit for character first.
“Fitness can be worked on, technical ability can be worked on and tactics can be worked on but character is permanent and I want the right characters.
“I want to bring strong people in that are going to make us better.”
With character in mind, Chris Doig has been at Sixfields this week, training, playing in a reserve-team friendly and getting his face known to the players already on the books.
Only Ryan Gilligan and Andy Holt remain from the Scotsman’s initial spell at the club, although Jason Crowe has returned in the past few months for a reunion with his old club.
As the manager of a team currently 92nd out of 92 in the Football League, Boothroyd faces something of a struggle to entice players to be part of his vision for a club he feels, when looking down on the ground from the gym at the top of the hill, has enormous potential.
“Players like that are hard to come by and that’s where my skills of persuasion come in,” he said.
“I’ve got to sell the dream of what we’re trying to do here to these lads.
“There’s no doubt we’re in a scrap at the moment and it is all about making sure we stay up so I’m looking at short-term solutions and long-term solutions that will do a job for us next season as well.”
Town have been linked with a number of players over the past month and in the week found themselves named in dispatches about a bid for former striker Steve Howard on social networking site Twitter.
The Leicester man’s wages – reported to be in excess of £20,000 a week – are likely to be a stumbling block, although Boothroyd was coy when asked about the likelihood of a player returning a decade after he was sold to Luton Town.
“Nothing is ever out of the question, all kinds of things happen in January and I’ve liked Steve for a long time,” he said.
“But he’s part of a team that is going for promotion to the Premier League and I’m not trying to recreate the glory teams of the past here.
“Next thing I’ll be giving Dychey (Sean Dyche) a ring at Watford and seeing if he wants a game on a Saturday.”
There should be some activity between now and Tuesday’s deadline but Boothroyd summed up the nature of the transfer window in his final comment to the press this week.
“I’ve got so many different things going on and I’m having to keep my phone on me at all times,” he said. “And that’s not just because I’m expecting a call from my mum.”
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Sunday, January 29, 2012 at 11:57 AMWhy don't you two grow up and get an allotment if you are bored. with life.
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