Andrews Revelling In Role Of Surprise Pick

Records show that Keith Andrews was first seen with Wolves’ senior team when going on as a late substitute for Ludovic Pollet in a 2-1 second-tier win at Swindon in March, 2000.

But his introduction to Molineux’s senior players actually came on a pre-season tour two summers earlier, when he was taken along as part of his rehabilitation following a serious knee injury.

The Dubliner, then only 17, was not fit enough to join in with group training but underwent light work under the supervision of Barry Holmes and mucked in where he could by helping the physio and, in particular, kit-man Taff Davies.

Was that trip – one that contained two defeats in Austria and two wins in Germany – the first sign that Andrews was sufficiently rounded and grounded to one day work on the other side of the white line?

More than 25 years on, ‘Keet’, as he was sometimes known due to the distinctive way he pronounced his own name, returns to Molineux on Saturday as head coach of Brentford. And he heads back at a time when he and his club are performing better than many expected.

His employers were ravaged in the summer by the loss of not only Thomas Frank and various backroom colleagues to Tottenham but also the departure of star players Bryan Mbeumo, Yoane Wissa and Christian Norgaard.

With Andrews surprisingly upgraded to the top job following 12 months as set-piece coach, The Bees were viewed by many as relegation fodder. But the evidence of the first half of the season is making those predictions look alarmist.

The Premier League’s newest and least experienced boss has ensured his side are a considerable force at home especially and is seeing to it that his days as an impressive, articulate TV pundit seem a long way in the past.

The last time I met him was when he came to watch a pre-Christmas Wolves v Liverpool game as a spectator in 2021. He was still part of Stephen Kenny’s Republic of Ireland coaching set-up at the time and then squeezed in a few months with Chris Wilder at Sheffield United before being appointed at Brentford in 2024.

It has been a rapid and thoroughly surprising rise to where he now stands in the piercing Premier League spotlight but one which he appears to have taken in his stride.

Former Wolves defender Nathan Collins, now Brentford’s club captain, has been quoted as saying this month: “It didn’t feel any different when we came back after the summer. The transition was very easy. It was seamless to come back with a whole new staff and it felt like just another day.”

Remember that story about Mick McCarthy gently chiding a staff colleague at Compton for saying he was ‘only a cleaner’? Footage of Brentford’s Christmas lunch has appeared on X and shows Andrews on his feet, naming every member of the catering team and thanking them for their ‘special’ efforts and preaching the need for togetherness throughout the club. Mick will have loved that!

So what was Andrews’s Wolves story at the very start of his football career?

He had already spent a year or two at Compton by the time he signed his first professional contract in 1999 and quickly made an impression on those around him.

In a feature in the match-day programme, he was described by team-mate Shane Tudor as the biggest moaner in a squad overseen by Chris Turner and Chris Evans; a sign of his desire for high standards, maybe?

A club insider told me he was a big influence in and around the youth team and something of a dressing-room joker. But anyone who met him was soon struck by his engaging personality and politeness.

This contemporary of Robbie Keane, Matt Murray, Lee Naylor, Joleon Lescott and others had to wait until just after the departure of Colin Lee as manager for his first start in the first team, caretaker boss John Ward naming him in the 11 for the win at Sheffield Wednesday two days before Christmas, 2000.

He must wish Ward had been given the job permanently. The midfielder played in all four of the games for which Lee’s no 2 was in charge but then fell by the wayside after a promising first few months under the incoming Dave Jones.

The manager took the curious decision to make the 21-year-old captain against QPR in the final game of the season – a strange choice because it seemed like a reward for bad behaviour. The midfielder had been shown a straight red card in the previous weekend’s win at Crystal Palace for a lunge at Andrej Rubins that was the prelude to Temuri Ketsbaia being taken off in a tactical readjustment and throwing his shirt to the ground in disgust.

To go from being one of the club’s youngest ever skippers to making only four starts in 2001-02 was quite a drop-off and his prospects receded even further after Paul Ince had arrived to strengthen a midfield already containing the twin talents of Alex Rae and Colin Cameron.

When he did play, he wasn’t always given the leeway home-grown youngsters receive. Was he appreciated enough by management and supporters alike?

There was only one Premier League appearance for him in 2003-04 but a renaissance came after the arrival of Glenn Hoddle as manager; maybe not surprising as Andrews made up for a lack of pace by being a lovely passer of the ball.

The player might have struggled to sufficiently impress Jones but Ince was a definite admirer and both scored in a League Cup win at Rochdale in a 2004-05 campaign that proved to be the Dubliner’s last at Molineux.

Many of his 22 appearances that season were at the side of Ince, who was then his manager in a highly successful stay at Milton Keynes Dons and also at a Premier League Blackburn.

Andrews gave another possible hint to the future by serving as club captain at MK and scored the winner in the promotion-clinching League Two win at Stockport in the spring in which he also opened the scoring with a penalty in the Football League Trophy final against Grimsby at Wembley.

Twelve different clubs show on the 45-year-old’s playing CV and he didn’t reach 100 games for any of them. 

The 2008 League Two Player of the Year would love to have linked up at Bolton with Gary Megson and Chris Evans, the duo having departed when he did sign at the JJB Stadium following a spell at Albion.

Bizarrely, the 35-times-capped Republic of Ireland international scored more goals (one) for the Baggies at Molineux than he did for Wolves (none) during his 72-match stay here.

That one for Albion was the penultimate goal scored at the stadium in the McCarthy era and we can only hope for a much happier outcome in two days’ time.