Carlisle United Football Club

“It’s not just about ability, it’s about having the right type of person,” he said. “That part of it is massive for me. I’m in a good position with that because I have Lee [Dykes] who has a good understanding of how I want to work. 

“He knows I want to progress and to do that I have to be around people who are like minded individuals. I also want people who have a hunger and desire to be successful. It’s not something which always stands out, but if you ask the right questions and have good conversations, as Lee does, then he can start to see that I will get a good reaction from the player. That means we all have something to work with.”

“As a coach and a manager you don’t want players you can affect as much as you want players you can improve,” he explained. “The easy part of coaching is putting pictures on pitches and getting the players to adapt and understand that. What you then need character wise is a mix to make it work, and we do try to get that with the acquisitions we make.

“At the moment we have a good selection of solid players and we’ve also added a bit of flair. In terms of Bastien [Hery], it’s a bit of French flair, and he’s one who sticks out with me because I think we’ve done very well to get him. 

“He’s playing and training the way I like to see the game played. He has resilience about him but he also has an air of unpredictability. I do like that in certain players. 

“It’s part of trying to create an expressive environment because I want all of our players to play the right way, both in and out of possession. We’re getting the platform in place from where all of our players can go out and perform.” 

“I think the friendlies we’ve just played have shown us we’re getting closer to where we want to be,” he said. “The squad still needs to be trimmed down slightly and there is still room for additions to be brought in. There are areas on the pitch where I know I can go and acquire variations on what we already have here. However, overall I’m happy with what we are doing.

“There is money in from transfer activity from the last few months but the message I learned a while ago is that it isn’t about exactly how much money you have to spend. It’s knowing that money is there and available in the first place.

“My job then is to put value into the business I do. I look at what I want to do in detail and I then take it to the stakeholders. I explain where I feel the money is best used so that the team and football club can reap the benefits.

“I look at the squad right now and I feel we do have some good options. Some people could see this as a weakness, but I haven’t got a settled formation in my head at this moment in time. In other words, I can’t say I’ll play 4-4-2, 4-3-3, 4-1-4-1 or any other combination we’ve used before. I don’t know what I’ll go with yet, but I do know that whoever plays they’ll give us a very competitive game of football.” 

“That has to be the minimum expectation for every game we play,” he commented. “When the opposition have the ball we want it back. When we have it we want to play. It’s nice to have the options so that we can then look at and settle on a formation which we think will be the one to go out and hurt teams. 

“I want to score goals but, and as I’ve said before, I’m mindful of the fact this club has conceded over 70 goals in both of the last two seasons. That culminated in relegation and a relegation fight, so I have one eye on that and also one eye on how I want to entertain.”

“That’s what we’ll be looking at, starting from next week,” he concluded. “A lot of the work up to now has been physical, so we’re going to look at more of the technical and tactical work going forward.  

“We’ll be ironing out and honing in on some of the formations I think we’ve got the personnel to adapt to and we’ll take it on from there.”