Scott Brown's Fleetwood Q+A in full: Following Joey Barton and 'welcome to the crazy gang' Celtic texts

Why did you choose Fleetwood?

For me, the first job is incredible. The chairman’s ambition is frightening. They’ve been promoted six times in 10 years. What he expects from the club, what he thinks it can be and his ambition is second to none. If you come down and see the training ground, it is amazing. And what he’s done for the community is frightening for everybody. For me, for me and Steven (Whittaker), for this to be our first job, it’s a great place to start and learn. It is a great club and we have some great young players as well I’m looking forward to meeting you. We are just looking forward to getting started. They've done up all the pitches at the training ground so the pitches will be fresh. We are going on re-season and then hopefully we can get a good start to the season.

Could you have taken an easier option - assistant or something like that and ease yourself into it? It is quite a gamble to jump straight into management knowing how the business is. Do you recognise the size of the risk as you could have taken an easier option?

Yeah, for me it is also to come outside my comfort zone. To have my first opportunity to come down to League One in England is huge for me as well. I know I don’t know the league as well as other managers who have been here for five or 10 years but at the same time, I have someone who has been working here for years at the club in Stephen, Stephen Crainey. He’s been here for a long time; he’s brought all the young kids though, so for me, it is good to have that bond with him. The understanding, the trust I can have with him. And I can speak to him about the young lads; what they need, what they want and what their expectations are as well.

Played under incredible managers is it a case of taking bits of each of those and making it your own style?

Yeah, I think you got that spot on. It is about learning, and stealing little bits from every manager. For me, I’ve had some fantastic managers over the years. I still speak to them now and I spoke to them last week about taking this job and they all gave me the green light, and glowing references as well. It is huge for me to maybe go on to the phone with them and maybe ask for a favour or two. Or for them to watch the games and see what I’ve been missing as well.

What is Scott Brown's managerial philosophy - do you have one?

Yeah, you’ll see in a couple of months. For me, it is about starting well. There have been a lot of injuries last season, so it is about getting the lads fit, getting them robust as well. It is a minimum of about 50 games a season they are going to lay with Saturday/Tuesday, Saturday/Tuesday so it’s going to be long and intense. It is about how their bodies react to that as well so we need to make sure training has got a great intensity to it and need to make sure there is good shape, and good structure to it as well. And there is also an understanding of how I and Steven want to play too. We are going to go all the way to grounds we don’t know as well. That is why we are going to have to lean on Stephen a lot as well. He knows the league, he knows the players to look out for as well. But don’t get me wrong, we are going to do our homework as well. We will be sitting there, we will be studying. We go on holiday on Sunday but at the same time, if the missus and kids think it is going to be a chilled-out holiday. We are going to be working, getting used to teams we are going to be coming up against, players we are looking at too. And we hope that puts us on the front foot to start the season well because we start back on the 23rd of June. I hope the lads come back in and they’ll be in good condition as well. 

After many years of Scottish football is it refreshing to have a change of scenery?

Yeah, definitely. I’m going to see parts of England I’ve probably never seen before. And I’m looking forward to that. It’s going to be exciting. The chairman does everything well. We are in hotels the nights before games and we have a proper bus as well. Everything is done really well here and we are just now looking forward to getting the lads on the grass and getting points on the board for Fleetwood.

READ MORE: Scott Brown reveals SPFL transfer raid plans as Celtic legend gets to work at Fleetwood

Have you thought about how you want players to see you?

I’ve seen it both ways. I’ve seen managers sitting upstairs and not coming down to speak to players. But I like to speak to people. I want to know what they’re like, what they want. I’ll be out on the training pitch every day. I’ll be speaking to them there, I’ll be speaking to them around the changing rooms, I’ll have one-to-one meetings, group meetings, analyst meetings, things like that. I’ll be hands-on. I enjoy that role, I like to understand people and their body language as well. It’s important for me to get to know how they are, not just at the training ground, but away at home as well. If they need someone to speak to they know my door is always open. I know it’s easy enough to say, but I’m here to chat to them at any point and make sure they are ready and they are focused on the game. All I want from them is to be professional, make sure they are organised, and they are ready to be o the training pitch for us.”

Is it good to cut your managerial teeth out of the Scottish football spotlight?

Yeah, I think that’s there as well. And I grew my hair so I don’t look as wild as I usually do. It’s small things. It’s a fresh start away from Scotland coming down to England. I am an inexperienced manager, but at the same time I’ve learned from these great managers and been involved in dressing rooms, I’ve run dressing rooms. I’ve been a coach at Aberdeen as well, so there’s that experience I have that will help me out there. Hopefully, as I said, I’ve got managers out there I can pick the phone up to and ask for a favour or two, or try to get a player from as well. To have those relationships with clubs and managers as well, it’s good that I’ve kept those doors open.

You said you spoke to old managers was there one message that stood out?

Win games! Otherwise, you won’t be a manager. No, they all text me to say welcome to the crazy gang now. I spoke to Lenny (Neil Lennon), I spoke to Brendan (Rodgers) and I spoke to Gordon (Strachan). Over the years, they have been vital for me. Gordon was the one that signed me as a young, wild 20-year-old, and he nurtured me into a central midfielder and taught me how to play well and with a bit of discipline. I had Lenny who was fantastic with me. He made me captain, and kept,e club captain as well, and for me to learn from Neil who himself was captain of Celtic… his desire to win was exceptional. I had Brendan later on in my career when I was 30, and he pushed me to a different level as well. To take different bits from every manager, I’m lucky enough to have the career that I did and those managers that I did as well. They put a lot of time and focus on me, and I can’t thank them enough for that. But now I’m always going to ask for little favours as well, so they’re stuck with me.

Is the loan market in Scotland of interest to you Calmac the obvious example of a successful loan down south with Notts County?

I’ll take Callum! I don’t know if we could afford him. But yeah, definitely, there’s always going to be little bits of quality there, and I’ve got a great relationship with Celtic, and Hibs and Aberdeen as well. For me to hopefully be able to speak to them and maybe get a player or two as well would be huge.”

Did you learn anything from your spell in management at Aberdeen?

Yeah, I think set-plays are huge for us, and we did those really well at Aberdeen. How to be a proper manager, how to be about the place, how to react, because when you’re still focusing on playing, you don’t understand what a manager does day-to-day and what the coaching staff do. How many videos they’ve got to sit down and watch, and analyse, we’re all watching training back and analysing that as much as we possibly could. As a player, you finish at half-past 12 and you could be in the house at one o’clock every day if you really wanted, or on the golf course. As a coach, you were getting in at five or six at night, then watching the under-20s game which would be kicking off at seven, so you had an hour in the house, a quick dinner and back in. The job takes over your life and that is one thing that every single manager has told me. They said this is your life now. There will be no time for golf, socialising and going out and enjoying yourself and you have to make the most of it now as you never know where you can go.

That won't faze you committing to football management 24/7, will it?

It has never been a problem as I enjoy it. I enjoy watching games, I enjoy watching training back and I enjoy understanding the game as well. I am a young manager and Steven and I are going to learn but we need to learn quickly and we will do. That's the beauty of it for both of us as we are here to work hard.

Even though it's the third tier there are some massive clubs in there - Ipswich, Bolton. Sheffield Wednesday to name but a few what is the realistic expectation of what you can achieve?

We will take it one game at a time and you should know this answer by now. We'll start the season well and I will talk to you after that. Expectations start with how hard and well we work in training and getting all the lads onside and making sure that they know the style and the way we want to play. We will take it one game at a time after that and we have got a few friendlies coming up as well we will be looking to that and we have a mini pre-season in Croatia and we'll get everybody together for that which will be good. Our expectation levels are just one game at a time.

It is a massive moment for Callum McGregor tomorrow when he gets his hand on that trophy how thrilled are you for him?

I am delighted for him to be fair. Celtic asked me to pass the trophy to him but I don't think it was quite right for me to go back to Celtic just yet. That would make it all about me and not about Callum and it has to be about Callum tomorrow and what he has done for the club and how hard he has worked. It was a no-brainer when I was leaving the club to nake Callum captain as I knew he was a fantastic player and his work rate was exceptional and he runs the dressing room. That's what you want for a captain as you want someone that is responsible and will work hard and who also leads by example on the park and he has done that this season. He has been exceptional.

Be honest with us you just want to be a better Fleetwood manager than Joey Barton don't you?

Joey did a great job here and there are a lot of nice people who say a lot of nice things about him. He did well for the club.