Adams is miles better after his refresher course

TAKING a sabbatical is not uncommon for football managers these days. Pep Guardiola spent a year in New York in between winning titles with Barcelona and Bayern Munich, and Carlo Ancelotti is enjoying a break since his summer departure from Real Madrid.

Perhaps the best beneficiary of a footballing gap year, however, is Plymouth Argyle manager Derek Adams. After he was sacked last August by Ross County, the Scotsman (below) travelled the world to broaden his knowledge of the game.

In January, he watched Real Sociedad and picked the brains of compatriot David Moyes, who advised him to visit as many clubs as possible. The globetrotting has clearly paid off for Adams, who took the reins at Plymouth in June and hass wasted little timee in turning them m into League Two title contenders.

‘I went to Spain in n January. It was the he winter break for mostost teams and I watched hed the likes of Basle, Freiburg, Dynamo Kiev and Mainz training,’ said Adams, following a 1-1 draw at Dagenham and Redbridge.

‘I went to a number of games — Malaga v Villarreal and Real Sociedad away to Granada. It was good to see these things, talk to people about their ideas and really benefit from the time away.

‘I went to the USA with Shaun Maloney to watch Chicago train and look at their set-up, and I went to Wigan. It’s been a good time out of the game.’

Adams’s coaching education has been ongoing since childhood. From the age of six, he was inspired by Sir Alex Ferguson’s exploits at Aberdeen where Adams’s father George was youth coach. Entering management aged just 32, he guided Ross County into the Scottish Premiership and took the unfancied Highlanders to the Scottish Cup final.

Given this experience, the 40-year-old seems a perfect fit for a club yearning to return to the Championship.

It has been a tumultuous eight years since Argyle flirted with the play-offs to the Premier League under Ian Holloway. Successive relegations and financial worries saw Plymouth come within days of becoming the largest European city without a professional team in 2011 until local businessman James Brent rescued the club. ‘It was a club that I thought had been in hard times over the yyears and we wanted to get them back to where they belong,’ said Adams. ‘ You see 1,000 fans here today, it’s a fantastic away support.’ They didn’t have much to shout about though. Wayne Burnett’s Daggers looked far from relegation strugglers. Exciting 18-year-old winger Jodi Jones ran Plymouth ragged and Dagenham deservedly went ahead in the second half, Joss Labadie racing on to a long ball and finishing past Christian Walton.

With just 30 seconds to go, however, Argyle finally turned on the style. Stocky striker Ryan Brunt, on as a secondhalf substitute, hit a 30-yard screamer which took a slight deflection into the top righthand corner to snatch the unlikeliest of points.

‘It was a very poor performance from start to finish,’ Adams said. ‘It was the only shot on target we had.’