Football: `Mongrel' Baxter is aiming to put the bite on Arsenal

STUART BAXTER has a habit of rubbing people up the wrong way: referees, officialdom, even his own supporters. Yet the manager of AIK Solna can count on one friend at Highbury tonight - the enemy in the Arsenal dug-out.

The man who describes himself as "a mongrel" is in the doghouse for the Champions' League match. Banished to the stand after a heated row last week with a referee whose lax control probably cost the Swedish champions a historic victory over Barcelona, Baxter may seem like a man alone.

Yet one of the English coach's closest confidantes is Arsene Wenger to the extent that the Group B game is not such a meeting of minds as a merger. The pair share a philosophy of how the game should be played that stems from their time together in Japan several years ago, and if Baxter's bust- up in the Rasunda Stadium last Wednesday - which earned him a red card and a seat in the stand tonight instead of the dug-out - was not exactly Zen Buddhism at its best, Baxter simply offers the explanation: "It was a scandal."

Wenger, for such an equally placid man, has also been known to have a short fuse. The Arsenal manager would have been similarly roused by the way Barca scored a dramatic late equaliser while AIK had only 10 men because one of their substitutes was prevented from entering the pitch by the referee. That the Spaniards then grabbed another goal to win 2-1 added insult to injury.

Baxter may find a touch or irony in the fact that his much-sought chance to inhabit a dug-out at one of England's most glamorous clubs has been denied him. The wanderer, whose father Bill is a former Wolves player, coached in Sweden and Japan after a low-key career as a player, thought his methods were too unorthodox for British palates ever to land him a job here: Until Wenger came along.

"Arsene has changed a lot of minds in Britain about the way to run a team," Baxter said. "He came here with `strange things' such as strict diet and physical regimes, and tactics.

"You can no longer call them `boring Arsenal'. He's also a positive thinker and he's got that across to his players.

"Hopefully Arsene has opened people's eyes, especially chairmen to the extent that someone might think about bringing home a British manager who has been a success in every country he has worked in."

Baxter was manager of Sanfrecce Hiroshima, with whom he won the J-League, at the same time as Wenger was with Grampus Eight before Highbury beckoned. Yet Baxter's return to Europe was a little more low key, going to AIK, as much for his Swedish wife as the fact that it was a fertile ground for him after winning the title there with Malmo.

Well documented problems with the AIK fans - he had death threats last year - have turned his thoughts to home. "I would love to work in Britain. I am proud to be British but I feel European. I am a mongrel really.

"But the problem is that a lot of chairmen in Britain have not been dynamic thinkers - until now. Just because someone has not played 400 games for Arsenal, it does not mean they cannot manage a club of that calibre - Arsene has proved it, and I feel I could."