I said that we practise, but that’s it difficult to recreate a match situation. He said, ‘Why don’t you do it in front of the crowd after a game?’ I thought that was a great idea, and it worked really well [following the 2-1 home win over Ipswich at the end of last season] It bonded the players and the fans. You want the whole to be greater than the sum of its parts.”If there were an adjective for this kind of thinking, it might be Sir-Clive-Woodwardian, and it is no coincidence that the two are friends “I met Clive at a dinner We got talking, and after that we had a few chats He’s a world champion, I wanted to know more about him We also had Matthew Pinsent in at the end of last season I wanted to know what he did in a week, how he excelled There must be common denominators in sport I want to find that one per cent edge to make us better With Clive I talked about penalties. At the moment I’m on a book called Blink, about decision-making, and why it’s sometimes good to go with your gut instinct. I read a book by the same guy, Malcolm Gladwell, called The Tipping Point, about the little things that together tip into a big thing, whether it be crimewaves, flu epidemics, whatever It’s the same with a football team. Ars? Wenger was able to field a full team of internationals, but instead of seeing that as a disadvantage for Watford, Boothroyd tried to turn it into an advantage. Most of the Arsenal players had been on midweek duty for their countries, so he prepared a dossier on each man: how far had he travelled; when did he arrive home; how had he performed in the past in the first match after an international break, with a Champions’ League match to come? In other words, who might be plain knackered, who might be saving himself for Europe?Of course, the very word “dossier” has been discredited in football ever since the days of Boothroyd’s fellow Yorkshireman Don Revie, and indeed the Arsenal players didn’t look remotely jaded, romping home 3-0.

But the exercise shows how Boothroyd thinks, and the military analogy is not altogether fanciful, for he tells me that he quite often comes to this very Starbucks having first trawled the adjoining Borders bookstore for biographies of old soldiers.”I gain inspiration from whoever, whether it’s Abraham Lincoln or Norman Schwarzkopf. On a few occasions we’ve shot ourselves in the foot, that’s all. And I believe you should never play the occasion rather than the game. Against Arsenal last week we played the occasion a little bit.”Boothroyd’s preparations for the Arsenal game would not have disgraced a military strategist. He won’t countenance the idea that it’s a relegation battle, though. How can it be, this side of Hallowe’en?”I came into the Premiership expecting us to do well and I’m still confident,” he says “People have always said the wheels will come off for us They said it last year, they’re saying it now.

But I’ve seen enough to know that there are three worse teams in this league than us And we’ve drawn four games, which shows we’ve competed It’s not like we’ve won one and then lost a load Nobody has psychologically given us a pounding. “But on current form, both teams will probably lose,” says Boothroyd, who also has a wry West Yorkshire wit. When he stood glowering in the dug-out watching his players squander a 2-0 lead against Fulham the other week, I thought some of them might leave the dressing-room in concrete overcoats. But he has nice West Yorkshire manners.Tomorrow, he takes his players to The Valley for what has already been dubbed a six-pointer with Iain Dowie’s beleaguered Charlton Athletic Charlton are bottom, Watford one place better It’s a must-win for both teams. He asks Ian to get him a decaffeinated latte – a caffeine hit is the last thing he needs – and a blueberry muffin. I note that when they arrive, he says a polite thank you.
I sometimes think that his dress sense, the black shirts and bright ties, make him look a bit like a mafia hit man.