Doncaster Rovers: 'He ticks all the boxes for being a successful manager' - ex-Rovers boss and Leicester City U21 chief Steve Beaglehole talks Darren Moore

Former Doncaster Rovers boss Steve Beaglehole believes Darren Moore is destined to manage at the top level and is the ideal man to guide the club to promotion.
Steve BeagleholeSteve Beaglehole
Steve Beaglehole

Beaglehole was due to bring his Leicester City U21 side to the Keepmoat last night for the second round of the Leasing.com Trophy.

He was at Rovers when Moore joined as a player from Torquay United in July 1995 and says he has been impressed by his progress in coaching and management in recent years.

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“I know Darren very well,” Beaglehole told the Free Press. “He was a player ironically that I signed at Doncaster. I was manager when he signed many years ago from Torquay.

“He’s a great lad, he was a great player and he did a fantastic job at West Brom when he was doing my job there.

“He knows how to develop and improve players. He developed Harvey Barnes who is now in the first team at Leicester.

“I think Darren’s philosophy on how he likes the game to be played is conducive to being at a big club.

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“I think the way he sets the team up, they’re an attractive team to watch and certainly at West Brom they were.

“There’s no reason why he can’t climb up and back and be a manager of a big club or why he can’t hopefully take Doncaster up and be in a higher league with Doncaster.

“He’s shown in the jobs he’s had in football since converting from a player to a coach and then to a manager, he ticks all the boxes for being a successful manager.”

Beaglehole – who still lives in Doncaster – said he could not have foreseen Moore’s journey into management but admits he had a significant presence in the dressing room, even as a young player.

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“I couldn’t say I was even thinking about at that time,” he said.

“There are a few players in the group I have now at Leicester that I think would make good managers but I didn’t really think about that sort of thing back then.

“What I could say about Darren was that he was a big, strong, powerful bloke that when he walked into a room he had some presence about him. That struck me at the time, very much.

“You look at Graeme Jones who was there at the time too and I wouldn’t have thought he’d go into management but he was only young and had only just come from Bridlington when I was manager and now he’s manager at Luton and has had a great career as a coach.”

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Beaglehole – who memorably guided Rovers to the final of the FA Youth Cup in his time as youth coach – has kept in regular contact with Moore since they worked together at Rovers.

It helped pave the way for Harvey Barnes – son of former Rovers forward Paul – to join West Brom on a highly successful loan spell from Leicester last season.

And he revealed Moore enquired about the availability of several young Leicester players on his return to Rovers as manager in the summer.

“He asked me about one or two players when he arrived back at Doncaster and those players are going to be playing on Wednesday night,” Beaglehole said.

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“I know he is still interested in those. He’ll always get my opinion and what I think.

“We do keep in touch.

“If there was someone at Doncaster doing well or someone Doncaster had played against in League One that we were looking to recruit then I’d ring him up and ask him his opinion because I think he’s a good judge of a player.

“He was at West Brom U23s and we’ve talked about players he might have been after or we might have been looking at – especially with being in that area.

“He was aware of players that we had when he was at West Brom and he did a great job with Harvey Barnes who was a player I had through the U18s, the U21s and U23s before he went out on loan where he had the chance of going to Leeds or West Brom.

“For sure Darren Moore has played a big part in Harvey Barnes now being an outstanding player in our first team who is still young and is going to improve further.”