Pete was part of a tight-knit and knowledgeable team alongside Craig Cope (now Head of Football Operations at League Two AFC Wimbledon) and Dan Millard, who is the First Team Analyst at Millwall in the EFL Championship.

His colleagues pushed their own egos and self-interest aside, they welcomed Shuttleworth and what he brought to the table and he thrived. He reflected:

“They knew more than me, but they helped me to transition into my role in what is now an established pathway for coaches in the game. My own pathway is very rare: the simple truth is I had a stroke of luck and found someone who put faith in me.

“Jeff saw something in me, and I found out that the best teachers in Performance Analysis are the managers you work with. Harry Redknapp taught me so much and then we had Steve Cotterill and Garry Monk, and I learned every single day tactically.

“I understand the popular Jack the Lad perception of Harry from the outside but when you are inside a club working with him, he is such a motivational figure. He makes a football building feel nice and warm and people enjoy going to their work. The players loved him, he knew how to put round pegs in round holes — he had shown throughout his managerial career that he knew how to build a team.”

The irrepressible Redknapp was 70 when he was axed at Birmingham in September 2017. It was his last job in management after 1,395 games in the hot seat that had also taken in Bournemouth, West Ham United, Southampton, Tottenham Hotspur, Queen’s Park Rangers, and the national team of Jordan.

His mission to keep Birmingham in the Championship was accomplished but when he left early the next season, Pete was pitched into a rollercoaster environment. He winced:

“I remember we lost to Forest under Steve Cotterill and that night, about seven staff got fired. I thought I would be next because I was concentrating on the opposition then for our next games.

“The Head of HR phoned me at 9pm and I had that feeling of dread because it was my first full season out of teaching and I was already moving on to my third manager. I thought I was getting sacked and I just felt that would be humiliating in season one full-time in the game.

“I knew Garry Monk was bringing in a new Head of Analysis but in the end, I was asked to stay on. Then Garry left and his assistant, the Spaniard Pep Clotet, took over and I became the game analyst. I was in the changing room at half-time and I was more involved.”

Clotet is now boss of top Russian side Torpedo Moscow, but his spell in charge of the Blues was ill-fated. He won just 13 of 47 matches and when the pandemic hit, there was a feeling inside the building that the gaffer might be on borrowed time. An uneasy Shuttleworth returned to work and said:

“When COVID-19 hit and we came back, we were only allowed to coach pods of seven players at a time. The first-team coach was Craig Gardner and he asked me to take a pod. I was back on the grass again, I’d gone from scout to opposition analyst to in-game analyst to coach again.

“We had players like Jude Bellingham there and I had one of the senior players come and tell me that the sessions I’d put on were great and I should get out from behind the computer. It set me thinking and at the end of the season, they brought in Aitor Karanka as the new boss who had two Spanish analysts who travelled everywhere with him. So my role changed again: I was now no3 in my department from being the top analyst and a coach.

“My thinking was that I was in football to make an impact and if I couldn’t do that, then I should go back to teaching. I decided to walk away and I applied for the job as an analyst at Derby County.”

Pete was at a crossroads in his career. He chose a fork in the road that would eventually see him become Rooney’s Assistant Coach, landing a dream adventure in Major League Soccer.

Yet again, though, he needed to find a colleague who was comfortable enough in their own skin to hire him. He pointed out:

“Ben Warner, the head man, was younger than me at 27 but he gave me the job and I respected that. We worked so well together. Wayne was a player at Derby at first, and that’s when we first got introduced.

“By now I knew the role of the analyst and what it truly entails. If the boss has media duties at the training centre for two hours late in the day, you have to be available when he finishes just in case he has an idea he wants to work on.

“I have a mentor called Joe Carnall who taught me that, to be there to help those ideas flourish. This game can be a severe environment, it’s not all fans chanting the team’s name on a Saturday. There are 60-70 hour weeks that go with that, there are missed holidays and Christmases.

“Whether it is triathlon or coaching, I go at it. The work of an analyst is all-encompassing, you work when the manager is in and I treat my current job with Wayne at DC United no differently. My default approach is to work hard, I have an addictive personality and I go full at it in all walks of my life.”

In Part Two of our interview, we’ll discover just how much Wayne Rooney has come to value that work ethic.

Pete Shuttleworth on Football Careers

“I always had a basic CV in the past and then we had Scotland keeper David Marshall at Derby County who has been involved with Football Careers for a long time, and he recommended the company.

“I love it because every time I want a change it is done quickly and professionally. I have a lot of different angles in my life and my CV, having been a teacher before — and they have summed my journey up so well in the document. It is superbly put together and it helps me in my career, there is no doubt about that.”