As Swansea adjust to life post Roberto Martinez, the rest of the football world wonders whether Rafael Benitez will have a new rival for title of ‘Best Spanish manager in the Premier League’.
Marcos Painter has seen at first hand just how effective Martinez can be after working with him closely at
Swansea before last week’s departure to Wigan and a crack at the big boys.
Givemefootball’s Ian Clarkson spoke to Painter in the second part of our exclusive interview, and found him confident that both Martinez and
Wigan will prosper in 2009-10.
Q: What are Roberto Martinez's best qualities?
A: I think his best quality is his communication skills. That might sound strange talking about a Spanish manager in England but he has played over here for a long time and he is very good at dealing with situations on a one-on-one basis.
He isn’t the loudest of people and his assistant manager usually does enough shouting for both of them! However, everyone knows he is the manager and when he speaks players always listen. That is his real stand out quality and that will serve him well at Wigan. He is one of the best in the business.
Q: He also delivered an attractive brand of football that won nationwide acclaim didn't he?
A: We didn’t just launch it before he came to the club and used to play a bit but he completely changed the formation, and the biggest difference I noted was that from day one of pre-season we worked with footballs.
All of the work we did was at a high intensity and it was the perfect style to play.
Q: Do you know who will be Swansea's next manager?
A: We are like the fans in that we don’t really know who is going to be appointed at present. There has been a lot of interest in the vacant job according to all of the newspapers and Internet and some good names have been linked but, as players, we don’t really know who will be appointed until it happens.
I am sure the board will appoint the right man to take the club forward.
Q: Will Roberto Martinez's departure mean clubs will be circling Swansea to try and pick off the best players?
A: Clubs were being linked with our players irrespective of whether the gaffer was here or not.
That was always going to happen as we had such a good season and I would be very surprised if there hadn’t been any phone calls to our chairman over certain players as they really shone in the Championship last season.
Q: What message can you give supporters who are worried by Martinez's move to Wigan?
A: A lot of our fans are probably very worried as Roberto Martinez proved to be a great manager in such a short space of time at Swansea.
However, it is still the same team at present and if we can hold on to our key players then the core of the team will still be there, and there should be no reason to worry. Last season doesn’t mean anything as we have to start again, but we would like to build on what we achieved.
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