Scott Brown has revealed how he has enlisted the help of three former Celtic managers to take Fleetwood Town on a historic FA Cup run.
Last week rookie boss Brown became the first man in Fleetwood’s 115 year existence to lead the Lancashire minnows to the fifth round of the competition - where they will take on Vincent Kompany’s Burnley for a place in the quarter finals. Now, speaking as the first star guest on the all new ’Off The Record’ podcast, the former Parkhead skipper has told how Gordon Strachan, Neil Lennon and Brendan Rodgers have been helping him to plot Fleetwood’s course into the history books as he cuts his teeth in his first job in management.
In the hour-long podcast, Brown reveals how the arrival of Rodgers at Celtic in 2016, helped convince him to forge his own coaching pathway towards a career in the dugout. And the man who captained the Glasgow giants to nine successive titles and a quadruple treble said: “I was going to last at Celtic for as long as I possibly could when he was there because I knew somewhere down the line, I’m going to pick his brains, I’m going to phone him up and ask him for help. And I’ve done that.
“It’s my first job and I’m not ashamed to ask for it. I’ve spoken to Lenny and I’ve spoken to Gordon and I’ve spoken to Brendan because it’s a big step for me, going from playing football straight into management. I’ve picked Brendan’s brains a lot.
"I’m always chatting to Lenny as well and I’ve spoken to Gordon as well. It’s small things they might help me with. Things I maybe don’t see or maybe don’t think of.
“I have a good coaching staff here too, all looking at things from a different angle. I’m not always going to say I’m right but at the end of the day I have the last decision.”
Brown’s cup run has lit a fire under his first campaign in the hotseat. The 37-year-old joined the League One outfit in the summer after leaving his role as assistant boss under Stephen Glass at Aberdeen midway through last season.
And, while Brown is on target to keep the club clear of relegation, he is also within 90 minutes of leading them into the last eight of the cup after knocking Sheffield Wednesday out of a fourth round replay last week. With a trip to face Kompany’s Premiership promotion chasers at Turf Moor to follow at the start of next month Brown says he’s getting to grips quickly with the transition from playing to management.
He said: “It’s totally different because you get caught up in every single moment when you’re involved in a game and you can affect it. But when you’re standing on the sidelines there’s not much you can affect.
“You can have your thoughts before the game, you can have your half time team talk and give a couple of notes to a few players here and there but I put quite a lot of demands on the lads and they performed. That was the main thing.
“It’s been a hard last three weeks, losing three games. So for them to bounce back like that against Sheffield Wednesday and to go into the fifth round for the first time in this club’s history is huge and it shows we are going in the right way.
“The league form has to improve but this was the first time we have ever been in the fourth round and now the first time we’ve been in the fifth as well. We’ve played against some good clubs as well so it’s not as if we’ve had byes all the way through!”
And Brown has revealed that - after spending years as a shaven headed dervish in Celtic’s midfield - his new look hairstyle is helping him to look the part on the sidelines. He said: “ It’s a fresh start and I don’t think in my first job I wanted to go in with a skinhead, losing the plot with a lot of English lads and them looking at me going, ‘What are you doing?’.”
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