I would have been about seven years old when the formative years of my competitive football education began. I was playing in the local leagues around Manchester, playing against lads from tough areas who had been taught they had to fight for everything.

With good coaching, proper motivation and the right club structure with organic growth, you can achieve an awful lot in football.

There are lots of concerns facing English football but for me the major one is the way in which football clubs are run by owners, whether they are growing organically and sustainably and how that is being policed by the football authorities.

Something interesting has happened over the last 10 years in the Premier League. Players who once would have been discarded as expensive and too old have become important parts of title-winning squads.

There are some agents who do a good job looking after players but there are others who stifle and mollycoddle them.

We always looked forward to playing Aston Villa to hear him mangle Ugo Ehiogu's name. "Make sure you pick up Ehugu, Ehogy, whatever his name is."

It is one of my pet hates when I see players who have agents who do everything for them. They don't know how to set up their own bank accounts, they don't know what they are spending their money on and they can't make their own decisions.