Still prepared for Hasselbaink ‘razzmatazz’

The Brewers appointed former Chelsea legend and Dutch international Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink recently with Saturday the first he takes charge at the Pirelli Stadium.

Still said: “Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink was a fantastic player, great player. He’s been trying to get a job in English football and now he’s got it.

“Maybe it has that little bit of razzmatazz to it now, well that might affect them, that won’t affect us.

“We will be completely unaffected, so it might work in our favour.

“We will train properly, we prepare properly and make sure the players get the best information of who we’re playing against.

“We’ve done that for the last 18 months and more often than not, that’s been enough.

“Sometimes things come up and we have to be adaptable as well, but our formula is tried and trusted and we won’t go too far away from that.”

The ex Royal Antwerp boss made a winning start to life at Burton, beating Wycombe 3-1 on Monday in front of the onlooking Hatters’ coaching staff.

Still wasn’t surprised that Albion’s results picked up immediately with a new face in the dug out.

He said: “I thought they did very well, Terry (Harris) went, Hak (Hakan Hayrettin) went, but it can work two ways.

“They’ve changed their manager, Gary Rowett has gone to Birmingham and they had hit a little bit of a sticky patch, so this just might liven it up a bit.

“Possibly a new manager coming in might be a good thing for them, not that Gary Rowett wasn’t doing a good job, I don’t mean it that way.

“Their form had lowered a little bit and the new manager syndrome can give everything a lift. It may well have done that and they got a good result against a decent Wycombe side, they deserved it too.

“But I don’t believe in this new manager, everyone plays better. They can only play to their maximum potential, that’s all they can do, they can’t play above that.”

Although Still admitted he didn’t know a great deal in how Burton would set up for the clash due the recent appointment of Hasselbaink, he wasn’t overly worried, saying: “We might not know what he’s going to do, but he might not know what we’re going to do.

“What we do though, is we just look at another team, we look at their strengths and then we decide how we’re going to play.

“We don’t much change how we’re going to, we might tinker slightly, but what we’ve found is that if you match up with teams, I’d pick our 11 against most 11s.”

One player in the Burton ranks who Still is well aware of is left back Damien McCrory who he signed while at Dagenham & Redbridge.

On his former charge and the Brewers’ other threats, the Town boss added: “He’s a great lad, did terrific for me in the promotion side to Division One.

“He’s a good character, got a good attitude, a good trainer, so we know that he is a good performer.

“(John) Mousinho whose had a few clubs, he’s always a good solid competitive player, I like him. I don’t know if (Ian) Sharps is going to be fit, he didn’t play the other night, but he’s a good defender, honest, hard working, competitive and an experienced player.

“The lad (Lucas) Atkins, the wide boy, he’s a big lad, strong, powerful, can run inside. (Stuart) Beavon’s a good player, did well at Preston, that’s a good signing and he’s a clever, clever player.

“Like lots of clubs, they’ve got one or two individuals, but its their team ethic that has carried them through the last couple of years.

“Going back to when they first got promoted, they’ve always been one of those sides that I’ve always found that before you play them, you always know they’re going to have one or two players that you’ve never heard of and never know too much about.

“But they come up with a little bit of something, and that’s what I always found. The one or two I don’t know much about might be the ones that surprise us, but we’ll be ready.”