Sheffield Wednesday boss Carlos Carvalhal hopes that his Cup pedigree pays off against Arsenal

LIFE BEYOND THE PREMIER LEAGUE

(Getty Images)

Carlos Carvalhal is remembering his first encounter with one of football’s north London giants. The Sheffield Wednesday manager may have a date looming with Arsenal in the Capital One Cup next week but, sitting in his office at the club’s training ground, he let his mind wander back to an October evening at White Hart Lane in 1984 when he made his European debut as a raw centre-back for Braga in a 6-0 Uefa Cup drubbing by Tottenham.

“I was 18 and we had lost the first leg 3-0 so the coach put in some youngsters to give us experience,” he says. “It was fantastic, even if we lost 6-0 and [Garth] Crooks got three goals.”

With a smile, Carvalhal goes on to recall the words of Braga’s coach, Quinitos, when he sought to lift his players’ damaged morale afterwards as Glenn Hoddle walked by with his wife. “Why are you upset? Look at yourselves – small guys, your wives and girlfriends are ugly, your cars are shit. Look at them – nice guys, nice girlfriends with big cars. Did you really expect to beat these guys?”

Carvalhal will hope there is no need to employ similar kidology next Tuesday after Wednesday’s tie with Arsenal in the Capital One Cup fourth round at a packed Hillsborough. For the South Yorkshire side it will be the first meeting with the Gunners since the 3-3 draw at Highbury that confirmed their relegation from the Premier League in May 2000 – and for Carvalhal an opportunity to underline the progress made since he replaced Stuart Gray in June.

“It is a big club, it is a giant that was sleeping in the last 15 years and the big challenge is to try to wake up the giant and I think we are starting to do it,” says Carvalhal. “It is not something we can do in one or two months but a lot of things have changed since we started – the way we play, the atmosphere with the fans, the enthusiasm around the club.

“In Portugal we didn’t hear too much about Sheffield Wednesday in the last few years but because we beat Newcastle, the name of Sheffield Wednesday was in the newspapers.”

That 1-0 Capital One Cup victory at St James’ Park included, Wednesday are on a seven-match unbeaten run ahead of tonight’s derby at Rotherham United and, overall, have lost only three of 15 games under Carvalhal, the club’s first non-British manager.

It constitutes an impressive start under the 49-year-old Portuguese who has had to bed in 15 new players following a £9m summer recruitment drive by Dejphon Chansiri, the Thai businessman who bought the club in the spring with a vision of Premier League football inside two years.

It helps that Carvalhal had followed the Championship closely since his former physical assistant Carlos Cachada went to work with Aitor Karanka at Middlesbrough. “We talk often,” says Carvalhal, who also has the support of a transfer panel set up by Chansiri which includes Glenn Roeder, the former West Ham and Newcastle manager.

“When we choose the players we check not just their football abilities but also the personality,” notes Carvalhal and the evidence so far on Hillsborough’s new £1m pitch is encouraging, with loan players like centre-back Michael Turner making their mark alongside permanent signings such as £3.5m forward Fernando Forestieri and midfielders Barry Bannan and Marco Matias. That said, he argues there are “eight teams with more advantage than us” when it comes to gaining promotion. “We are fighting but we are outsiders”.

They will certainly be outsiders against Arsenal yet Carvalhal’s cup pedigree is a source of hope. As a young coach in his mid-30s he led third division side Leixoes to the Portuguese Cup final in 2002. “For the first time a team from the third division got to the cup final. In the semi-finals we played in Braga, my home city, and knocked them out. Everybody thought they were in the final and we beat them 3-1. It was one of the games I will never forget. In the final we lost to Sporting who were champions and because of that we played in the Uefa Cup.”

Carvalhal, whose CV features spells at Sporting Lisbon and Besiktas of Turkey, had another noteworthy cup exploit with Vitoria de Setubal, Jose Mourinho’s hometown club, in 2008. “They were nearly bankrupt but we built a team from zero and won our first League Cup.” It is no coincidence that Mourinho is said to have recommended Carvalhal – who once studied with his No 2 at Chelsea, Rui Faria – for the Wednesday post.

Sheffield may seem a long way away from the “fishing towns” that Leixoes and Vitoria represent yet Carvalhal sees a similarity in the strong local support, noting: “They have a very big identity.” He certainly gets Wednesday’s history – making more of it, though, is the challenge he has to embrace at a newly expectant Hillsborough.