Non-league / Gary Boswell / 11 October 2010 /

Is Steve Evans destined for the big time? How good is Jamie Mullan? Gary Boswell tells us which non-league figures can and can't cut the mustard in league football if given the chance

I often get asked how I got into the professional prediction business. Where did I train and what do I do to stay on top of the game.

The answer is manifold and complicated but the thing that often surprises people is the training aspect. What sort of things I do to stay in trim. Footballers and skiers run in and out of traffic cones. I have my own prediction training regime but as in most things, it is practice that is the key to long term success. Keep practising. Always be on the lookout for ways to hone the skill.

Long term prediction is my main forte and the crucial path to profits and I practice that more than any other aspect. Long term can of course vary in length and there are no laid down rules but I look particularly at the one to five year span and practice targets in that sphere.

Working with the Pools Panel Project which I started in 2001, I run non league football prediction programmes and one of the training modules therein that I can recommend is the practise of predicting which individuals from the world of non league football will make it in the long term to the upper echelons of the game.

Who is the next Martin O'Neill? Which players can make the same transformation that Cyrille Regis did in the 1970s and which DJ Campbell has done in recent times?

Who is the next 1.6 million pound footballer currently plying his trade in non-league football?

I'm always on the lookout for it as part of day to day player and manager assessment that comes with the season long match and league champion prediction business - so in some ways it is part of the daily ratings game - but I also keep a little black book of long term fancies for success. This always gets consultation when the next manager markets go up. Will Sir Alex Ferguson be replaced by the rising new non league star? It hasn't happened yet which is perfect fodder for the professional predictor.

When it does, who will it be?

In managers, I'm always looking for the ones who 'say the right things'. Ignore those whose daily practice is bigging up their own and their team's talents. Non League football is currently topped by Steve Evans who manages Crawley Town but he is not in my little black book for future Premier League or Championship club posts. He already had his chance in the league with Boston and his failure to keep in check his inappropriate public behaviour makes him a non starter for the top jobs. Of course Tommy Docherty comes to mind as an exception in that mould but Evans is not in the Doc's class as a raconteur and wisecracker whilst you also have to conclude that Tommy Doc might struggle to be top drawer in the modern game. Things have moved on.

I watched Nigel Clough do his non league apprenticeship as a manager for many years and was correctly able to predict his rise to the upper echelons. Nigel often says the right things although you could argue that he had a leg up in view of his parentage and also that things have not greatly pushed on since he arrived at the top end of the game.

Watch this space as to whether he ultimately follows in the O'Neill footsteps. Long term prediction means just that. You have to wait a few years to find out whether you were ultimately right or wrong!

Less obvious candidates for managerial greatness in the current Non League batch are Hayes & Yeading's Garry Haylock and Newport County's Dean Holdsworth. They both say the right things and are busy racking up the achievements without too much shouting about it. They currently hold pride of place in the little black book that had Mark Stimson and Mark Cooper in it in recent years. Like Clough, Stimson and Cooper have taken a few backward steps since their arrival in the top drawer and the argument could perhaps be made that it has become harder for a non league manager to make that step up. Or perhaps that it takes longer. Keep those eyes on Dean Holdsworth though. Like Haylock, he is overachieving with the standard of players he manages at County and his understanding of team dynamics is what I consider to be top drawer. I see him managing in the Premier League in the future.

His main goalscorer Craig Reid is also my idea of a player to make that leap. The pintsize pincher has bagged 11 in 15 already this season after a similar glut in last season's Blue Square South promotion runaway. He is [13.5] in the current Betfair top goalscorer market and is an excellent value bet as a player who defies the definition of a perfect footballer's physique and simply knows where the net is. Could he replicate DJ Campbell's feat and get himself a 1.6 million pound transfer fee in the current climate? Quite possibly.

One more name to watch out for is the young Fleetwood winger Jamie Mullan. Currently receiving kid glove treatment by Cod manager Micky Mellon, I was hugely impressed by his dribbling skill when I scouted him in the summer and confidently predict a big future for him in the game if he stays injury free.

That's my gaze into the distant future done for the day. Off now to work out who is going to win this afternoon!

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