‘My players are like my children’

KICK OFF: You have built a reputation, in South Africa at least, as a coach to rescue teams from relegation trouble – Black Leopards, Baroka FC and TTM just last season. Swallows are in a similar predicament, but is it fair to say that the opportunity to achieve more than that is greater with The Birds if you are given time?

This is a massive job, it absolutely is. If I nail this, and no disrespect to the other three teams I have coached, but if I nail it, I would see myself being in South Africa forever. When I came to the club, they were bottom, they’d scored three goals. They had eight points. We then played six games in 17 days, which was horrendous. I’ve never heard of a fixture list as bad as that. We should have won at least five of those six games. But because the players didn’t know me, they didn’t know what I was all about, and I didn’t know them, I was relying on information from other coaches. Plus, I spent five of those games up in the stands