I wasn't given any targets.
I knew that the club just wanted to stay in the Premier League.
That that was the key to them.
But I also felt very, very quickly when I first went in
that there was a group of players that
were actually better than they were led to believe.
I think, maybe the club felt:
"Well, if we stay up that's enough."
But I felt with the group that, that I had to work with and
the players that we added in in the following seasons,
I felt that their expectations should be high
and I always felt that.
Supporters of clubs don't want to hear
that we're just happy to be here and we're lucky to be here,
and if we survive, if we get to 40 points, that's enough.
I always felt that supporters want to hear
that we want to be better next year,
we want to win a cup – all those positive mantras.
They don't want to hear the negative aspect of it.
It doesn't stimulate anybody, didn't get anybody excited.
So I always try to raise expectations whenever
I went into a club, it's high risk because you know that
if you do raise expectations and then you underachieve
then you're going to come under pressure.
And in the end, that's exactly what happened at Stoke.
But for the most part we had a great time,
we had a great four years.
Three top 10 finishes, 13th in the fourth season, I was there.
And I look back on it.
It was a time where we beat almost everybody
in the league at some point in those four years.
We had record points totals in the Premier League.
We beat the likes of Liverpool 6-1.
We beat Man Utd, we beat Man City.
We beat all the teams in the league.
At that point I felt we were producing the best football
that Stoke City supporters had ever seen.
They were quite regimented and Tony Pulis,
that's how he sets his team up and
he's had great success at that and the club itself,
that's probably when they first went into the Premier League
that's exactly what was needed.
But as I said, I just felt the group that I had to work with
and that I had inherited had a little bit more,
and could be better than they were at that point.
And we just said about trying to play a little bit more football,
but obviously still keeping all those elements of the game
that they'd always had in terms of the drive
and the desire and their commitment to the cause.
So we kept all that but we just sprinkled a little bit
of fairy dust on it and tried to make it better.
We played some great stuff I have to say.
We had different players, we had creative players,
we had powerful players.
So the mix that we had in
those in those days was very, very good.
We had the likes of Steven Nzonzi who was a top player.
Marko [Arnautovic] obviously who was a little bit of a maverick
as everybody knows and at times could be difficult to manage,
but on his day was unplayable.
You had the likes of Jonny Walters on the right-hand side
who would give everything in the game and
drag people along with him just by virtue
of his will and his desire to get something out of the game.
So the mix right through the team was really, really good.
And once they understood what I was about in terms
of how we should go about our general play
and what we're trying to achieve it was it
was great times.
Sir Alex is on a pedestal in terms of how
great he's been as a manager and as a coach
just because he's been able to build and dismantle
teams and still be successful.
Clearly he's had the resources and the stage to be able
to do that, but it's not easy.
It's not easy and I think what happened at Stoke was we
had a formula where we didn't spend a great deal,
and we had to get our main purchase correct.
We had to supplement it with good long deals for good players,
and we had to look after the ones that we had
to try and retain them to make sure that we had the core
to supplement the players that we were bringing in.
And you had to have all those elements,
that had to work every season and if I'm honest
in the last year those elements didn't work.
We spent money on the likes of [Giannelli] Imbula – didn't work for us.
Our loan deals didn't have the impact that
other loan deals in previous seasons had had.
And maybe, as well as that,
we had the players who were getting a little bit older
and needed to be replaced and
the level of young players coming through wasn't there either.
So there was number of elements and a number of reasons
why my final year didn't go as we'd hoped.
But looking back over the full course of my time
that I wouldn't have changed it,
I think it was it was a great time.
I think we had great moments, great games
that we were involved in.
It's just disappointing that now in this day and age
Stoke are where they are, because they shouldn't be in my view.
Your fundamentals always remain, I think that's important.
It's what you stay true to.
I've always wanted to have teams that will dictate to the opposition,
will be on the front foot,
who will be able to have that physicality
that we talked about but
not in terms of overstepping the mark.
We've been able to compete and I've
always felt that any team that I put out
will always have those elements to it.
But dependent on individual talent within your groups,
then sometimes you have to shape your philosophy
and go in different ways in terms of formations or approach to games.
I look at how I approach the game,
because I'm long in the tooth and my time has been
and gone but certainly from a forward's type
of situation it's changed because in my day
it was very much the way I played was with my back to the goal,
it was about retaining possession, it was resisting challenges,
it was bringing people into the game.
Whereas now I think the role of a striker is slightly different.
They have to be adept at finding those little spaces
in between the lines as we've talked about,
still have got to retain good possession in high areas
if they can, but the more I see them in the modern game,
there's less resistance to challenges,
there's more looking for fouls.
The game's refereed in completely different way as well
which has an influence on what players think they
can get out of the game or get to their advantage.
So there has to be a balance,
I think the balance is being able to
show robustness and physicality when maybe
the opposition expect you to go down easily
and I think that's the balance that modern-day strikers are able
to – the top ones – understand and are able to use to their benefit.
I like Agüero just because he's, as I said,
he can retain possession, he is not averse
to drawing fouls like old top strikers are,
but when he needs to be strong and in the
moment when he knows he can get shots off
on goal then that's when he's really robust
and he can retain possession and get shots
off and score goals which he's
done remarkably well over the years.
He's just a guy that you would like to play with
or play alongside because you know that he'd
create chances for you as well as taking them in himself.