Duffer should take the Keith Andrews route to Premier League management
Time for Damien to pack his bags and start again
Damien Duff was waxing lyrically the other night about the great job Keith Andrews is going at Brentford and how impressed he was on a recent visit to the progressive London club.
He rightly praised the way his fellow Dubliner has surprised so many of his pre-season critics with his management skills since he was appointed from within as Thomas Frank’s successor last summer.
Andrews had never managed in his own right before becoming King Bee. Nothing he did under Stephen Kenny’s tutelage with Ireland suggested he would have this club dreaming of Europe this late in the Premier League season.
His initial appointment as a set-piece coach by Frank was probably never deemed a route to the manager’s office by anyone outside of Andrews’ inner circle if truth be told.
Yet Andrews is now doing a very, very admirable job in charge of the team sitting seventh in the Premier League table in the Conference League qualification spot and potentially just one place away from the Champions League depending on how Aston Villa fare in Europe.
The Andrews story, as Duffer acknowledged after his recent visit to Brentford and a behind the scenes look at what makes the team tick under their rookie boss, is to be celebrated.
So too is the fact that Duff left Ireland on his managerial scouting trip. So too is his admission, at last, that he may well indeed need to travel again to kickstart his own desire to return to the dug-out.
When he took Shels and the League of Ireland by storm, Duffer made one very regrettable claim that he could never manage any other team, not just in Ireland but in football.
It was an admirable declaration of love but a naïve one. No club will ever love a manager back in the same way - if he hadn’t transformed things around Tolka Park then the only certainty for club and manager would have been the sack.
As it happened, Duff quit on his own terms. He got out when it suited him. And now, it would appear, he wants back. He has the coaching bug again.
He deserves to be back. He deserves to coach and to manage at a higher level than the League of Ireland, at a higher level than the Ireland Under 17s - unless he takes that on an interim basis for their upcoming World Cup return.
Duffer the manager needs to get abroad. Maybe to England, maybe to the continent like his good friend Robbie Keane.
He needs to work again. Not because he has to but because he wants to - and because he deserves to.
Talking about it on Irish TV is good but it’s not enough. Virgin Media and Premier Sports have never appointed a football club manager. Never. They’ve talked the talk as they should but they have never walked the walk.
What Damien Duff did at Tolka Park was remarkable but it won’t get him a job in England or elsewhere on its own. They won’t be talking about Shels winning the league at Celtic where Duff is 40/1 to get their vacant manager’s job.
He’s 20/1 to take over at his old club Blackburn where they do remember him fondly, marginally ahead of Pep Guardiola to become Chelsea boss at 33/1, the club who idolised him as a player, and 33/1 to take the job at Watford where they throw managers to the wind like confetti. You won’t get short odds on him for any managerial role in England right now.
Duffer needs to follow the Keith Andrews lead now, even if that means taking a coaching role at a big club outside Ireland and working his way into the manager’s office.
It worked for Keith and it can work for Damien. He deserves that recognition. And by the way, he needs to stop saying he fell out with everyone he’s met in football along the way to his success at Shels - that’s part and parcel of the game.
He will fall out with more people in his next big job. The sooner the better.