Basque in the glow: Iraola the best-kept secret lifting Cherries to new heights.

A 42-year-old Spanish head coach from the Basque region making waves and earning admirers in the Premier League isn’t a unique position.

- KARL MATCHETT

After all, the same applies quite specifically to Mikel Arteta. But this year in particular there’s arguably another of the same description outperforming him, if club context is taken into account.

Andoni Iraola has lifted no cups, won no titles, and has never earned a top-half finish in an elite league. Yet he has more than proven his worth, to the extent that far bigger clubs than he has managed so far – AEK Larnaca, Mirandes, Rayo Vallecano and now AFC Bournemouth – are taking note and, no doubt, wondering if he’s who they should turn to next time they need a new face in the dugout.

After all, despite the lack of silverware and so on, he has helped set records and break down performance barriers with scarcely believable regularity, given the profile of the teams he has been at. Mirandes had been to the semi-finals of the Copa del Rey once in almost a century of existence until he came along, but he took the second division club right back there. Rayo had only been there once in a century too; Iraola’s iteration again made it twice. Then last year with the Cherries, in his first season in England, he garnered their highest points tally in a top-flight season.