Kinnear Can Turn Toon Into 'The Entertainers' Again!

"I grew up with push and run.

"I have got all of my qualifications in football and have a degree in the game as well. I have studied for many, many years.

"But I was always a great believer in the management of Bill Nicholson at Spurs.

"Chris Hughton will tell you this as well - Bill would not allow you to kick the ball long.

"We were always push-and-run and give-and-go. We were just a team that played total football all over the pitch when I played for Spurs.

"When I went to Wimbledon we started with give-and-go, but we didn't have the quality of everybody else, so we had no other choice but to mix it.

"We had to do that to survive. The players we were getting were from lower divisions, but there were about 11 of them who left as internationals.

"I had a lot of internationals playing under me. There was Terry Phelan, John Scales, Keith Curle, Warren Barton, Dean Holdsworth and Robbie Earle - and they were all good footballers.

"John Fashanu was more of an old-fashioned footballer who did use his head whenever we got good deliveries into the box.

"We were also deadly from set-plays and we also got tagged with that. Today in football, if Ronaldo or Beckham scores from a free-kick, it is acceptable.

"If it was crossed into the box and somebody like Fash outjumped his opponent and headed it in, which he did on numerous occasions because he scored more with his head than with his feet, we got a lot of naughty comments.

"Some of that was because people were envious that we'd got our bunch of players who had come up from lower divisions and were keen to prove themselves in the top division.

"At one stage we were lying in third in the Premier League at Christmas and putting everybody's nose out of place.

"But as far as tactics go, we used to mix it and I have no regrets at all.

"I got to the semi-final of the League Cup and the FA Cup in the same season.

"When we got round to playing in the semis we had four key players who were knackered, otherwise we could have gone on to win it. There were a lot of things said about us at Wimbledon that we just had to live with.

"What happened was people judged us on our antics.

"They were publicity stunts, really, because we barely got any coverage!

"At our Press conference we would have just two journalists in there! It slowly built up to about 10, but we only saw the Press and the cameras once a week.

"We only had one owner, in Sam Hammam, and me as the manager. There was no board of directors - just myself and Sam.

"There were two of us running a Premier League outfit, which was amazing really."