I think I earned the players' respect, and that's the ultimate in life, isn't it? I didn't care if they liked me or disliked me, as long as I had their respect.
I have to be involved in negotiations because players have to buy into me and what I want from them if they join my club, so all managers need to be fully involved in transfers, that's for sure.
I'm not saying that they were Einsteins; they were marginal students. But every ballplayer whoever touched me has moved up his station in life. And the players moved up my station.
I have had situations in the past when you are close to signing a player and the money involved switches from euros to pounds to dollars. It is a difficult process, but one we have to work with.
It's always really challenging trying to go from player to player/coach. You have a kind of friendship basis of relationship with all of your teammates and now you go to this power position where you have to make decisions that might hurt people's feelings.
I think I earned the players' respect, and that's the ultimate in life, isn't it? I didn't care if they liked me or disliked me, as long as I had their respect.
At the end of the playback of the take of "Like A Rolling Stone", or actually during the thing, Bob Dylan said to the producer, turn up the organ. And Tom Wilson said, oh man, that guy's not an organ player. And Dylan said, I don't care, turn the organ up, and that's really how I became an organ player.
There is this ferocious digital revolution coming along and we're in the teeth of that at the time of maximum economic disruption. There are huge opportunities there. I made the point in my supplementary statement that the Guardian is now a very considerable global player, but there are huge challenges in terms of making, of finding, the convincing business model, so I want to see Guardian journalism continue and thrive, although whether and to what extent that is in print or in digital is a sort of second order matter.
Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounce it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines.
It's really hard because you only have that split-second to determine what to do. It's crazy. I try my best to use clear judgment and make clear decisions, but a lot of those collisions are unavoidable. You're either going to let them catch it and take a step to see what's going on, or there's going to be a collision.