NEWS that Watford parted company with boss Ray Lewington probably surprised supporters in these parts - particularly in the light of recent cup-tie encounters.

They would have been even more surprised, however, by news of his successor, a young man by the name of Adrian Boothroyd, who has an air of Jose Mourinho about him but, at 34, has only worked at academy level up to now.

His ambition is to emulate Watford's most successful boss Graham Taylor and take them back into the top flight.

But first, with only seven games left, he has to stay in the Championship and, given the club's position, it would challenge even the most experienced of managers.

He talks of emulating Graham but must remember even Graham served a successful managerial apprenticeship at Lincoln before going to Watford.

Adrian says men like Winston Churchill and Clive Woodward are his inspiration and Winston, I'm sure, would have been able to rally the troops and Clive, with his attention to detail, would be able to spot weaknesses in any organisation.

But, with all due respect to both these great men, neither had to go to Rotherham or Barnsley on a cold, wet winter afternoon and try to scrape out three points for survival.

So while the Watford training sessions will be short, sharp and interesting for the first few days, the proof of the pudding will be the next seven results.

One plus from a distance appears to be that young Mr Boothroyd has taken with him the experienced old head of Keith Burkinshaw, who at 70 can look back on a good career both in England and Scotland.

They met, apparently, while Adrian was taking the management course at Warwick University and Keith was his mentor.

Keith's best remembered for his time at Tottenham as a cup winner and the manager who signed Ardiles and Villa.

My main memory of him was in the last game of the 1977/78 season - Saints v Spurs at the Dell and we, by virtue of a draw at Orient, were assured of promotion.

We would win the old second division title if we beat Tottenham and, of course, deny them being promoted along with us and Bolton.

Spurs, for their part, needed one point to join us at the expense of Brighton.

Such was the interest, a full house was guaranteed, but many more Spurs supporters were milling around outside the ground and the police inspector in charge on the day asked me before the game to go on to the pitch with Keith to calm down the crowd.

I went to see Keith, who, because of the enormity of the occasion, seemed in a bit of a daze. We went down the stairs from the dressing-room and ventured about 20 yards on to the pitch, where I grasped his hand and said: "Just let's wave to all corners of the ground to help the police," then virtually turned him around like a windmill.

We went back up the stairs and the game began - a thril-ling encounter which either side could have won but which finished in a goalless draw.

I was disappointed - I wanted another championship medal to go with two I had won with Doncaster and Grimsby, and Spurs were naturally ecstatic to be going up.

I thought about that weekend when the recent Chelsea situation apparently made Mr Frisk, the international referee, retire due to death threats.

He should have had my post-bag which was filled with promises of a fate worse than death from the Brighton area, where the disappointment of missing out on promotion by one point was compounded by that night's Match of the Day showing Keith and me hand in hand before the game, which some Brighton fans took as some kind of collusion that made the draw inevitable.

Nothing could be further from the truth but such are the feelings of fans, which Keith will be reminding his young manager right now.