Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
In the dressing room there is nothing better than when a good player walks through the door and the guys say 'I'm glad he's come along.'
I don't think you can manage 400 games in the Premier League, 550 in the Championship, play 980 times and not be a little bit organised.
In football, you can never say anything is certain. The benchmark is 38-40 points. That has always been the case. That will never change.
You have to make sure you lead from the front and put a brave face on it during the tough times to bring people with you and get out of it.
The reason you come to manage Newcastle is to be in front of 50-odd thousand every week, even if you might get a bit of stick along the way.
It's the manager's job to always knock on the door, to always strive to improve, but there has to be a reasonable degree of common sense too.
From a playing or managing point of view relegation is a blot on your CV that you don't want, but you have to live with it and try to bounce back.
When I got the sack from Huddersfield it hurt me badly. I became reclusive, I never went to a match, don't think I left the house for five months.
You do get labelled in the game, and that's why I enjoyed my time managing in the Championship. I'd back myself against most people in that division.
I saw my mates go off to get apprenticeships on the shipyards and I went off to chase the dream of playing football and made sure I worked hard at it.
My dad worked all his life, an engineer, 30 years, week in, week out at the same machine. That is mind-boggling to me. I do not know how the hell he did it.
My loyalty was questioned for a long time when I was younger, and that's understandable. I found it very difficult to conform and I wanted to do it all my way.
When you get sacked, everybody thinks: 'He's a football manager, he'll get lots of money,' but you still get sacked, which for me is a slur on you, it degrades you.
They rejected me as a player. Newcastle said I wasn't going to be big or strong enough to make the grade, Burnley said the same. Most people said the same to be fair.
Stats can do anything you wish. When we got the sack at Aston Villa it came out there had only been Man City in that calendar year who had scored more goals than Villa.
One of the hardest parts of management is trying to bring a club back after it's been relegated because there is a lot of doom and gloom around, especially among supporters.
The Hull job had been offered to me and while watching Chelsea against Bayern Munich I was thinking: 'I'm going to give it a crack.' I'd rather be managing than commentating.
When you're 1-1 against Manchester United and you're trying to get the winner with five minutes to play, the fans play their part then and give you that little bit of adrenaline.
A lot of businessman come into football find it difficult. They think because they have more money to throw at it, that will work. Of course money helps but it doesn't guarantee success.
I judge people, and myself, when you are up against it. When you've been beaten like that you have to find out who is alongside you, you roll your sleeves and come out fighting and those are my principles.
Without that real spectacle of a big, noisy St James' Park or Old Trafford or the Emirates, the certain beauty of watching a game of football even live on the telly is not the same as far as I'm concerned.
I was player-manager at Sheffield United. I played my last ever game for them. It was terrible. We lost 4-1, I think to Sunderland. Fancy that, a Geordie, being forced to retire because of a defeat to Sunderland.
When I was younger I was a nightmare. I let people down. I resigned from Sheffield United because things were promised to me that weren't forthcoming. I let people down when I was younger, certainly in management.
I never thought I'd be in a position like I was at Aston Villa where people weren't going to get paid on a Friday. That's how bad it was. It looks great from the outside but we had huge financial problems for months.
The North East is a tough, working-class area. Its people boast great humour. But for two days every year, when Newcastle and Sunderland play football, it's absolute chaos. And very nasty. It borders on tribal hatred.
Call me old fashioned, but we're now holding umbrellas up as our players get off a plane. Do they need that? It's a few spots of rain. OK, they might get wet. Well, let them get wet. That's what happens when it rains.
If our players start to see coaching as a dead end, where is the next Ferguson, the next Clough or Shankly? It's sad. How will players see a pathway, how are they going to see a future if even the England job goes abroad?
A lot of people forget that I played for seven years in the lower divisions; it wasn't always 'this glittering career.' I had to wait a long time and even in the early days at Man U, for three years we didn't win anything.
He’s a fantastic talent and the complete footballer, probably the most coveted in the Premiership. It’s a privilege for the rest of us to be on the same field. If i could have anything i wanted for Christmas, i’d take Thierry Henry
My job's about the accumulation of points over a 10-month season. And if you're with a team expected to be in the bottom half of the Premier League it's always going to be tough. There's going to be periods when you go up and down.
You have to keep that equilibrium - not getting too carried away or beating yourself up too badly. As a manager you have to be in the middle all the time. If you take water in, people look at you and say - 'look at the state he's in today.'
I don't think I was a control freak. I just couldn't get my head around things. When I joined Sheffield United I was told I had £5m to spend, then when I went to see the chief executive he told me if I didn't raise £350,000 no one was getting paid.
Your boyhood club, the one you've supported, the one result that you look for more than anybody else because of my upbringing, has always been Newcastle so to go and manage it is arguably the pinnacle but it's a really difficult job, I have to tell you.
I had 235 games for Gillingham in the old Third Division. Everybody associates me with Man United and winning things but I had seven years at Gillingham and 3 at Norwich. One of those years we got relegated. Until I was 30, 31, I hadn't really won anything.
When I was younger, I was a bit awkward to work for, hence why I had about five clubs in two years. I was a bit petulant, shall we say. But you're never too old to keep learning because every day in management, something is thrown at you which throws you a curveball.
When I heard the word 'cancer,' I was in bits. I panicked, I think everyone does, it was very scary, horrible. Thankfully, the melanoma does not appear to have spread. They'll continue to monitor me, I've got scars on my face, on my back. Good thing I was never worried about my good looks.
I look at the England job. It's not always about being the greatest coach. You've got less than a week before most matches. So do the players need actual coaching, or do they need to be set up in a team structure that works, and then pointed in the right direction? Create spirit, take away the fear.
Every time I took another job, my dad would ask, 'Why are you putting yourself through it again, haven't you got enough money?' I wish I'd spent more time with them, I think anyone who loses their parents will understand that, but I also know what he would have said. 'You crack on Steve, get on with it, son.'
There was never any question about Scholesy's quality as a footballer. He was known as the little ginger magician in the youth team. Some reckon he's the best United player of the modern era, and there's a case for saying that. You don't hear him blowing his own trumpet, though - he just gets on with his job. He's the real deal.
I was a little bit headstrong; when you're younger, you want to take on the world. At first you try to prove yourself to be the boss. I don't think I lose my temper as often as I used to now but, back then, I needed someone with grey hair, with experience, to help me, to tell me certain things didn't matter, didn't make a difference.