WITH Christian Damiano taking first team training, one thing Saints won't be is unprepared.

The 54-year-old former Fulham and Liverpool assistant manager is noted for his meticulous preparations and on arrival yesterday immediately said: "I learned there is always a similar situa-tion - to get good results all the details are very important.

"You need to have the capacity to give the message to all the players and to make everybody aware because not only can you win with some small detail but you can lose as well."

It is this attention to detail on which he has built a near 30-year career of success. At Fulham, Damiano was noted for his belief in practising in training everything that could happen in a match.

"If you learn very well the basic skills, it is possible to add things," he once said. "It is easy to train players. When things are automatic, it is not then a problem to take a risk."

That is very much the Damiano philosophy - and that of the massively successful French sides of recent years.

His influence has infiltrated world football with the likes of Thierry Henry, David Trezeguet, Nicolas Anelka and Mikael Silvestre, he and Gerard Houllier guided France's under-18 side to the European Championship title in 1996, all playing in that mould - play well then take the risk to pull off some magic.

Indeed, such are his preparations to all aspects of the game he has even have things such as heading days when all the players would do all day is practising heading the ball.

Saints are known as one of the more progressive Premiership clubs off the field. They employ fitness and nutrition experts and have embraced new technology such as ProZone to add a scientific edge to a once purely irrational and emotive game.

"I think for the preparation and the job he did at Fulham," said Wigley when asked why he chose Damiano as his new first team coach. "The way the team were prepared and the way the team played good football, the type of football I like.

"I had a good look at his CV and he's had a cross-section of jobs in football and, when you sit down and speak to people, you find out about the person.

"I'm looking forward to working with him.

"I think we're doing scientific stuff already. Christian is another pair of eyes, another brain and another person to apply it.

"It's important we have three people because it's a heavy workload."

The other curiosity about Damiano is his desire to be a 'career coach'. He had one very brief foray into club management at Nice, where he had previously worked with the youth side in a spell in which he discovered a 13-year-old David Ginola.

Gordon Strachan would always say he didn't like being a manager.

He was a coach, but the only way he could pick the team was to be the boss.

Damiano seems to have been happy to work alongside people. From the French youth set-up with Houllier to national team scouting work to being Roger Lemerre's right hand man and then the same role at Fulham and Liverpool, his ambition to coach is obvious.

"Perhaps I am a lucky coach," he said. "I have been working always with a big manager and my position is more coach than manager. I was influenced by them all.

"For me it was a big compliment when they called me and asked me to work with them, like now.