While many of his managerial colleagues wake up worrying about set-pieces and starting line-ups, Tranmere Rovers boss Les Parry is focused only on learning French.

Fresh from completing a PhD on sports injuries in professional football in summer last year, the 56-year-old is now keen to try his hand at a new language, even if it means an early morning alarm call.

Parry admits it's not quite going as well as fortunes on the field have done.

But he is adamant the two go hand in hand, if only to ensure his sanity

"It's important to do something away from football," Parry tells the Telegraph in the run up to his side's trip to Scunthorpe United.

"When I was at uni, I used to get up at four in the morning and work from then until seven to get three hours quality time on my studies.

"That takes your mind off the football.

"When I finished that, for some unknown reason, I started to learn French. I can't speak a word, but it gives me an interest away from football.

"I have other interests. I'm really into gardening and me and the missus like to go out.

"But when I'm getting up early, I don't want to be thinking '4-4-2 or 4-3-3' and 'what are we going to be doing at set plays?'.

"I want something to kill that time, which is why I do that."

It is a pleasure to spend 15-minutes conversing with Parry.

There are no clichés or football-speak, not a shrug of self importance. Alliances aside, it is simply a chat about the merits of what makes both him and his improving side tick.

Tranmere are League One's surprise package this season.

So much so that even Parry himself concedes they are punching above their weight.

Unbeaten in six matches in all competitions, they visit Glanford Park tomorrow sixth in the table and with eight clean sheets from their 15 games this term – a better average than any other side in English football.

Not that the Football League's other famous physio-turned-manager feels any extra pressure as a result of their early-season form.

Now in his 21st year at Prenton Park, no-one would love it more than the one-time trainee shipwright if 2011/12 was when Rovers came of age and ended a 10-year exile from the second tier.

If they don't, Parry will maintain a refreshing sense of realism.

"I don't feel pressure," he says, when asked about the rising expectation levels of fans of every club.

"I talk myself out of it because I know the full story.

"I know what we have to deal with, so I console myself with that if others' expectations are higher than what we do. I know my staff are doing a great job.

"A section of our fans will think we've got a divine right to be where we are.

"But most of them are a little bit more realistic and realise by being in the top six, we are probably punching above our weight to be honest.

"At the moment our ambitions are the same as they were at the start of the season, that's to get 50 points.

"Most teams in our division are the same. That's not being negative, it's being realistic."

Timing is everything in football. For Rovers' 22nd post-war boss, it has proved especially so.

His PhD was preparing him for life outside the game, as a university lecturer, when he was asked to take caretaker charge to replace the sacked John Barnes in October 2009.

"I never saw the day I'd be stepping into John Barnes' shoes," he says, with the sort of Scouse wit usually associated with the other side of the Mersey.

"But then I never saw the day John Barnes would have been coming to Tranmere either."

Parry did not speak to Nigel Adkins before swapping treatment room for dressing room, but has chatted regularly to Southampton's former Iron manager since.

He shares Adkins' outlook that years spent working with injured players has helped him become a good man-manager.

He would love to share his level of success.

"He's done brilliantly," Parry says of his fellow Birkenhead-born boss.

"I used to scratch my head when his name never used to be linked with the bigger jobs. I always thought 'what are they looking for?'.

"If I do half as well as he has, I won't have done half bad."

Parry is equally as modest when it comes to the question of whether he enjoys the job, given both of his previous campaigns in charge at Prenton Park have been spent battling relegation.

"Enjoyment is a funny word," he quips.

"Some fellas enjoy being tied to a bed by a bird and whipped, but that's not my idea of enjoyment.

"On the whole it's been good.

"I'd been doing the physio role for 20 years and I was thinking I'd had enough of the hours and the inability to get away at a weekend.

"Taking over as the boss was a new job with different responsibilities, even if it involves longer hours. That re-ignited my passion, which has made all the difference."

A discussion on Scunthorpe United's form this season is timely, given Parry has just finished watching a DVD of the Iron's goal-less draw at MK Dons last weekend.

It has given him a chance to see first-hand what he says he has heard from his rival League One managers at grounds the length and breadth of the country.

Good friends with Iron boss Alan Knill he may be, but that relationship has no bearing on Parry's praise for United's performances this term.

He expects as tough a contest as any Rovers have faced at Glanford Park and told the assembled media at his side's weekly press call on Thursday not to be fooled by their hosts' lowly league position.

"Every manager I speak to when I go to watch games says 'do you know the best team we've played this season? Scunthorpe'," he insists.

"I'm fed up of hearing it and I'm sure Alan is as well.

"Every time I see him he tells me how they've had so much possession, a lot of this and a lot of that.

"It will turn for him. Looking at the game last week, you can't keep on playing like they did in that game and not pick up some serious wins.

"I just hope it starts after Saturday."

If it doesn't at least there will be no sleepless nights in the Parry household.