IN an era dominated by money, the need for instant success and an increasing number of trigger-happy chairmen, you can’t help but ask ‘who’d be a Premier League manager?’

Ask one of the game’s more old-fashioned characters that question though and he would give you short shrift – insisting many don’t know they are born compared to those battling the odds in the wilderness of the lower leagues.

Colin Hendry has experienced both sides of football, lifting the Premier League title during his glittering playing days at Rovers while also enduring tougher times in charge of the likes of Blackpool and cash-strapped Clyde.

Not that he is under-playing the difficulties every young manager has in the game now, from top to bottom, he just knows from experience exactly where the real pressure lies in football.

He said: “One or two younger managers have come into the game recently and they need good people round about them, especially if you are inexperienced.

“Because you have not got a lot of time. That is part and parcel of football.

“Having said that you ask any old player if they would be happy to be a Premier League manager and you would get two hands from every player.”

Paul Ince and Roy Keane face their own stresses and strains ahead of tomorrow’s Premier League clash between their Rovers and Sunderland sides – with the recent commercialisation of the game making every point crucial.

Former Rovers skipper Hendry insists though there will be many others on the less-glamorous side of football just fighting to make ends meet this weekend – with the very future of clubs and players in their hands.

He said: “My last job was at Clyde and that was the sharp end of the stick really. Your players are on £150 a week and I am selling the game to them.

“You have young boys who could easily have got a job driving a van for £200 a week and playing football part-time for £150 a week.

“I know exactly how it works. When you go back to talking to managers at the top level all they do is delegate and get a team out on a Saturday.

“They don’t have to worry about anything else at all. They have people round and about them who can do everything else.

“The real pressure is the boys at the lower level. In all honesty they are doing it for the love of the game.”

Hendry, with his flowing blond locks, cemented his place in Ewood Park folklore as he led Rovers to the Premier League title back in 1995, during two spells at the club that totalled almost 400 appearances.

Following spells at Rangers, Coventry, Bolton, Preston and Blackpool never hit such heights, before he went into management in 2004, first at Blackpool and then with Scottish minnows Clyde.

“I would love to be involved again,” he said. “It is something when you work with all your life it is hard not be involved, especially at a certain level.

“I was doing it for the love of the game at Clyde, just to be involved. I enjoyed my time with Clyde because I was involved with an honest bunch of lads.

“But the players you deal with at the higher level expect this and that, expect to be paid how ever much money a week. It is just the way the game had evolved.”

Back living in Lytham, looking after wife Denise who has suffered a setback in her recovery from a botched cosmetic surgery, Hendry has retained his links with the club he believes shaped a career that culminated in World Cup appearances for Scotland.

He was at Ewood earlier this week to mark the launch of a former Rovers players association and, with sons Kyle and Callum in the youth ranks, his love for the club will never falter.

He said: “My whole career evolved round Blackburn Rovers. It is the place where I became the player I was and had a great time.

“In that period we achieved the greatest achievement we possibly could have done so happy days. .

“Now It is very difficult for clubs to do a Blackburn. For a team to do that now, with the freedom players have is almost impossible. If they are not happy they will go.”

For all those Hendry fans out there though, do not despair – his love affair with football is not over just yet.

He said: “I watch everything. I am not doing anything at this moment in time. My wife has been ill again and so I just watch everything from a distance, which is good because there’s no pressure on me.

“I would love to be involved in football. At the moment though my priority is family. My wife has been off for a year now.

We were hoping she was coming to the end but it will be the New Year before she gets where she wants to be and we just carry on.”