Sanchez: I can handle both jobs

"There's no big secret to football from the top to the bottom," Sanchez explained. "I watch my son play on a Saturday morning and he doesn't play a completely different game from the one you see in the Premiership.

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"The basics are the same throughout and it's about making sure the players know what the basics are and doing them to the nth degree."

The Northern Ireland manager replaced Chris Coleman at Craven Cottage on Tuesday after returning from a skiing holiday and has signed a 32-day contract until the end of the season.

He has five games to convince chairman Mohamed al Fayed he deserves a longer deal and insists he can manage the Irish team for up to a year in his spare time.

Sanchez said: "I know some people have said it's impossible but as an international manager I know I can do the international job and a top job at the same time.

"A lot of managers take a break or go to Dubai to recharge their batteries during the international break. My holiday will be running an international side.

"When I was a player, I attended university full-time and played full-time for Reading and one wasn't affected by the other. I've been in situations before where people have said you can't do things and I've done them."

Asked if he felt like a Premiership manager, he replied: "I've always felt like a Premiership manager."

What style of football would he play? "Winning football." How would he achieve this? "By scoring more goals than the opposition."

As a club manager, Sanchez is best remembered for taking Wycombe to the FA Cup semi-final in 2001 but he also pointed out how he rescued them from relegation when he first arrived at the club in 1998.

"Wycombe were in the bottom four when I took over and we took 22 out the last 33 points to avoid relegation by seven minutes," he said.

The fact that he has never managed a top-level club appears to nag at Sanchez but he has enjoyed great success at Northern Ireland — beating England, Sweden and Spain in recent qualifying campaigns — and made a Windsor Park ticket the hottest in Belfast.

"I've come up against Sven, Luis Aragones and Felipe Scolari on the international circuit and done quite well against them," he said.

"So I like to think I compare with some of the managers in the Premier League."

Sanchez's first game in charge of Fulham is against Reading, his hometown club, and manager Steve Coppell is braced for a backlash at the Madejski Stadium.

Coppell said: "I expect some kind of reaction from the Fulham players, there has to be. Lawrie's a very determined man. I don't know him well but you can only compliment him for what he's done in management and what he's doing with the Northern Ireland team."

Coppell doesn't expect Fulham to change their style overnight to accommodate Sanchez's direct style of play, adding: "He'll just be concentrating on getting a result."