At the end of the day, my optimistic personality always takes over.

He made the impossible possible.

Maintain that motivation to go from A to B and to keep your focus on that target without any weakening. That is called tenacity; stamina in your motivation.

English players are as easy to coach. The problem is that the Premier League has the best players in the world, and statistically not all of them can be born in England. But we don’t have enough English players: we are working very hard on it.

Everybody has a different opinion in this league and nobody is a prophet. I personally don’t know who will win the league. I managed 1,600 games so, if Nani knows, he must be 1,600 times more intelligent than I am.

I have only been here since 1996 but between 1966 and 1996 England had thirty years without foreign players and didn’t win any more competitions in that time.

Sometimes now, when I watch continental games on television, I’m a bit bored. I ask, ‘where is the intensity?’

The real revelation of a player’s character is not in his social life but in how he plays. In my social life I can hide my real personality.

Spare me the articles about how nice Shawcross is because that was a horrendous tackle. People say we don’t fancy the physical side of it, but this is the result. If you see a player getting injured like that, it’s not acceptable.

We have tried to get closer to them, but we never copied anybody, we always tried to play our football.