Dennis Lawrence has worked his way up the ranks and holds the respect of one of the emerging top football managers in England at the moment.
The former T&T defender is currently the first development coach at Everton and continues to build a strong relationship with first team boss Roberto Martinez, who brought Lawrence into coaching at Wigan Athletic and took the former Defence Force man with him to Everton.
In all of that, Lawrence believes he knows his boss inside out and they are complimenting each other.
“He (Martinez) is a very detailed manager and he know exactly what he wants to do,” Lawrence said on Everton TV.
“He is as fair as they come and he is one those managers where you need to be very sure of what you want to do.. he will pick up on things very quickly. Working with him for a while, we’ve got a good understanding of how he wants to work and in that way it helps me with my attributes.
“I am a very disciplined and detailed person. I like to make sure things are done correctly and in that way the manger can just focus on creating a winning team.”
On his role at Everton, Lawrence said his experience as a player had helped him in his current role working with both youth and first team players.
“I think it’s important, being an ex player, that I can bring the experiences I have had playing. Some players do learn quicker than some. It’s important to recognize the ones who are not picking up as quickly. Players learn in different ways from a first team player down to an under 18 player,” said Lawrence.
Everton are currently sixth on the Premiership table after 11 matches with 20 points, same as champion Manchester United who are ahead of them on goal difference.
This coming Saturday is the eight-year anniversary of T&T’s 1-0 victory over Bahrain which sent this country to the 2006 World Cup Finals in Germany. The scorer of that historic goal in the second half was of course Lawrence in Manama back on November 16, 2005.