Trinidad and Tobago head coach Leo Beenhakker has had his fair share of impressive performances to assess recently as some of this country’s United Kingdom based players have hit good form on the home stretch as their respective seasons near end.
Beenhakker witnessed Kenwyne Jones’ strike last Saturday when Stoke City defeated Plymouth 2-0. The former Dutch National Team coach also got feedback of Wrexham’s match against Bristol City in which T&T trio Dennis Lawrence, Carlos Edwards and Hector Sam all made appearances. Added to that, Stern John seems to have regained form with his superb solo strike against Wolverhampton Wanderers while Brent Sancho also netted and has regained his first team place in the Dundee side. Scottish-based defender Marvin Andrews is also likely to make a surprise return to the Glasgow Rangers line up for their encounter against Celtic while Brent Rahim has netted two in two for Falkirk Reserves and English-based striker Jason Norville netting five in five for Watford. Beenhakker is expected to be in Scotland this weekend before returning to Trinidad next week to begin his sessions.
Jones said that his first meeting with Beenhakker was an affable one and he was even more pleased to have scored in front of the former Real Madrid coach. He’s hoping to continue his flow of goals when Stoke takes on Clayton Ince’s Crewe Alexandra on Saturday.
“He (Beenhakker) met me before the game and we had a few words which really was a get to know each other sort of meeting. I think that was a good idea for him to come over and I think all of the guys will be looking forward to continuing this type of thing,” Jones told TTFF Media on Friday.
“He also said that he was not here just to assess me in the game but still I was glad to have made a good first impression with the goal and hopefully he would have been pleased to see it. I am going all out to finish the season on a high now.”
The former W Connection and St Anthony’s College player said he was well aware that with a new coach at the helm of the “Warriors” it was somewhat now a scenario whereby a new approach could be taken and possibly new faces in the team.
“Obviously being involved since the start of the campaign I would now want to be in until it ends. At the end of the day it’s up to him to pick the players and we can all just perform as best as we could to try to get in the squad. It may seem like another start but in a way it could be good for the team,” Jones added.
The former National Under 20 skipper also touched on recent drop in confidence by his T&T strike mate Stern John, saying that he felt the Coventry City forward simply needed to get himself out of the rough patch.
“Any footballer could go through a bad patch, probably for a week, a month or even for a whole season but it’s all up to how well you can fight yourself out of it. Any player would want their teammates and fans to stick by him and we know what Stern is capable of, so it’s just a matter of him regaining that touch and being confident again,” said Jones.
The towering figure who was signed by Premier League club Southampton before going on loan to Sheffield Wednesday and now Stoke City, added that he intends to pull out the benefits from playing on the same team as John and the other more experienced players on the T&T team.
“As a young player coming up you always dream about playing in certain places and at this point maybe I am realizing part of that dream. The aim really is to learn from experienced players like him (John) and Dwight and the others and mix my style with whatever I could pick up from them. There isn’t really any limit to progress at the moment,” Jones ended.