I like to be able to control which players I'm working with. Because it doesn't matter how good a coach you are if the guys you're working with think they already know it all. You need a response, you need to feel they're trying. I want players who are always striving to improve.

Fitness is a curve. You can be Lance Armstrong, or you can be really out of shape at the opposite end. People enter the curve wherever they are and then they can move up the curve, by better nutrition and better exercise.

Believe me, you need good people if you want to make good players.

I did think there were one or two referees who had a personal thing against me. It wasn't them versus Celtic - it was them against me! I just think they wanted to take me on.

People talk about how you make team spirit - is it golf days or going out drinking together? That doesn't count. When you drink, you just tell lies to each other anyway and talk rubbish.

If I was English I'd kill myself

He [Sir Alex Ferguson] used to play tapes of Bill Shankly talking. I remember that and a singer he liked. I don't know who it was but it was crap. He played it on the team bus too, and all the boys hated it. Until one night it got chucked away. If he's still wondering who threw that tape off the bus, it was me. So maybe he was right and I'm not to be trusted.