Brendan Rodgers meeting inspired Spurs academy coach Taff Rahmann

Chatting to Liverpool boss Brendan Rodgers at the LMA Awards dinner has given Tottenham academy coach Taff Rahman the belief he can one day become the first British Asian to manage a league club.

The 31-year-old's appearance at Tuesday's event was an historic one - Rahman is the first British Asian coach ever to have received an invite to the League Managers Association Awards.

Jose Mourinho took the Premier League manager's award and Bournemouth's Eddie Howe the Championship accolade on a night which left British-Bangladeshi coach Rahman feeling inspired.

"Attending the awards was a great experience," he told Sky Sports.

"I had a brief conversation with Brendan Rodgers on the night and he's someone who has a very strong coaching philosophy and someone whose career I have followed closely.

"I feel as though my journey so far has not been too dissimilar from his during the early part of his career in youth coaching. I hope that I am able to follow in his footsteps and I'm planning a study visit to Liverpool soon.

"It was also breath-taking to hear Eddie Howe talk about the amount of work that has gone in to getting Bournemouth into the Premier League. To see someone relatively young achieve that kind of success was really inspiring."

Rahman is a former Arsenal trainee who counts David Bentley and Jermaine Pennant among his former team-mates as a youngster. After his career was cut short before he could make his senior breakthrough, Rahman devoted himself to coaching and is one of just a handful of British Asian coaches in possession of the UEFA A Licence.

He worked as a foundation phase coach at Arsenal, but is now a development coach at Tottenham and will graduate with a League Managers Association diploma next week.

"I think professional clubs are becoming increasingly aware that there is a pool of talent within the Asian community that hasn't been tapped into fully,” he said.

"I'd like to think people like myself can give others the belief that they can make it but fundamentally I hope people judge me like everybody else. I'm a highly-qualified coach who is driven and determined to keep on learning and improving."