West Brom fine tuned for success says Eddie Newton

Sep 7 2009 By Chris Lepkowski

“I knew the runs he’d make, he knew what I did.

“Off the pitch there was a mutual respect and we carried that on into management.”

Newton continued: “We have our moments. I’m not a ‘yes man’ and nor is he.

“If we don’t agree, we will discuss it and come to a conclusion – it may take three days until one of us blinks.

“But it’s healthy. Sometimes I’m wrong – I accept that.

“Sometimes he goes with my way and that’s the understanding.

“Also we have Ade Mafe. He’s a fitness coach but he knows football, likewise Michael Appleton. We’re all part of a team and we help each other.”

Concentrating

Newton is not surprised to see Di Matteo making a decent start to his career at B71.

He also revealed the contrast in their pre-match preparations.

“Robby analyses things – he was like it as a player,” added Newton.

“He goes into a zone before games. I’m relaxed but he steps away.

“He will go into game mode – he goes quiet, steps off, is thinking of all the multiple things that may happen during the game,” he said.

“When he first came to England he couldn’t believe that there was music blaring in dressing rooms, people playing head tennis and lots of shouting – in Italy it was quiet, everyone is concentrating, reading books, slipping into a zone.

“I will look into details. The height of a player, the team’s qualities, knowing you have to match height for height, aggressiveness for aggressiveness, last minute changes – it always seems to happen when we play teams – who’s marking who, what’s going to happen, that kind of thing.

“We’re both different in that respect.”

Newton concedes that coming to a new club during pre-season was never going to be easy.

But he has been satisfied with the start.

“It’s been quite intense,” he said. “We’re in the same situation we were in at MK Dons when we took over somebody else’s pre-season.

“You can’t change things so you have to adapt to someone else’s schedule. We would have liked more time to get our principles over in training but we went straight into games where we couldn’t really condition the boys the ways we’d want to. But most of our principles have been applied.

“We still want to play football, but we want to be more solid at the back – the boys are getting used to that.

“This is the most physical league in the world. The physicality of this league is massive and if you don’t stand up to it then you won’t be able to play your football.

“We want to implement our ideas at the training ground to reflect this. We feel we’re getting there.”