During his 12 months out of football management, the nearest Ron Atkinson got to the bench was giving evidence for Bruce Grobbelaar at Winchester Crown Court. Today, however, no doubt in trademark belted raincoat, he will be prowling around his touch-line pew like an old sheepdog, attempting to harry his Sheffield Wednesday team to victory over Arsenal.

In the heterogeneous world of Premiership management, there cannot be two men of more contrasting hue than Atkinson and his opposite number. Arsenal's Arsene Wenger is bespectacled, professorial, one of the new breed of intellectual foreign coaches who is fluent in several languages.

Atkinson, such a caricature of the old-time English manager that he played the role in Dream Team without needing an Equity card, is a laddish 58-year-old who would wear his touch-line sunglasses in a monsoon and is proficient in only two tongues: English and football-speak.

While he admires the French flavour that Wenger has introduced into the Arsenal diet, Atkinson points out that the qualities more associated with roast beef and Yorkshire pudding are still their staple. He says: "Full credit to what Wenger has done but he didn't come in and say, we're going to play with a sweeper. No, he kept the same back five that has been at Highbury for 200 years."

Dutchman Dennis Bergkamp, too, he says, has discovered that the word clog does not just refer to a shoe from his homeland. "He will be in the running for any player of the year award but for all his ability, I would guess that Ian Wright has been chivvying him about the English way.

"When Bergkamp first came here, he was a bit milky but he has come to terms with what the Premiership is about. There is a stickability about Arsenal, an ability to get something out of a game even when it is going against them. That is a very British thing."

Atkinson, a tank of a player himself, accepts that you need people who can put a boot in to allow those he describes as "the flairy players" to do their stuff. At least, that appeared to be his descriptive term.

He has two of the finest flairys in Italians Benito Carbone and Paolo Di Canio. But Carbone will be on the bench today as Atkinson, unusually for a new manager, inherits a team that won its last game, a 5-0 thrashing of Bolton under caretaker boss Peter Shreeves.

To Ruud Gullit of Chelsea, such a result would have no bearing on his next team selection. Big Ron, however, was brought up on managerial tenets which came on large slabs of stone. One of them was: do not change a winning side.

"It's a unique situation," he admits. "It's the easiest decision I've ever made. I told the players on my first day. I told them they were the boys in possession and if they kept to that benchmark against Bolton, they would have no problems.

"Carbone is disappointed and I don't blame him. I have seen him do things on the training pitch this week which were breathtaking. But he understands the situation and I've told him that if he comes on, he can show us what a good player he is."

The second easiest decision of Atkinson's career was telling Peter Atherton to keep the captain's armband. He says: "I have had Bryan Robson and Ray Wilkins as club skippers, both captains of England. But I never had better than Nigel Pearson here last time.

"Peter Atherton comes into that mould. He has leadership on the park and dressing room authority. You know that if anyone starts whingeing or moaning, the big skipper will pick him up and pin him to the wall. I don't mind a bit of that."

Atkinson is still finding his way around the corridors of a revamped Hillsborough. But he has slipped effortlessly back into the routine of training ground banter with players, competing in the five-a-sides and sharpening his one, sometimes three, liners.

He describes Carbone as having a touch of the Gordon Strachans, "though I'm not sure he has Strach's competitive edge. He's a little imp. He has that brightness in his eyes that sometimes makes me think I'm talking to Dennis Wise. Except that Carbone speaks better English."

There is, says Atkinson, a buzz about Hillsborough and nowhere more so than in the manager's office, which he is occupying for the second time. The brief is the same as when he arrived in 1989: keep the Owls in the top flight.

He does not seem to regard it as an onerous task, with a team more talented than the '89 non-vintage. Perhaps that is why he told the chairman to leave any talk of contracts until the job is accomplished.

The usual target of 40 points should be enough, though he breaks into a self-deprecating laugh as he remembers going down with Wednesday in 1990 with a record 43 points.

He gratefully accepts a final shot at foreign managers. "I think chairmen bring them in because they want more control and managers from abroad are used to just coaching the team. But the highest profile foreigner was probably Dr Jozef Venglos at Aston Villa and he wasn't very successful."

It is unlikely he picked this example out of thin air. When Villa sacked Venglos in 1991, they went for the more solid British qualities of someone called Ron Atkinson.