I still keep an eye on Preston and Derby, irrespective of what people say, what people write and what people think.

I had without doubt a wonderful wonderful time at Preston North End. I made some great friends and I had a very enjoyable time there. Sadly at the end there was a lot of innuendo and mischief making, things being written and a lot of things being said but in a nutshell I couldn’t thank the fans and the people at the club who supported me enough for what they gave me, it was a wonderful time.

Then I went to Derby County, in much more difficult circumstances. he club had just been taken over, had only 17 players and one recognised striker. The infrastructure there was a shambles, which needed to be changed. There were six members of the new board, six co owners and trying to build that club up from the very bottom to the very top was extremely difficult. The biggest problem for me, as you know, was that we had a three year plan.

The plan was to try and secure a top six finish, in the third year, and try and get promotion but sadly it was done in 11 months and everything changed but that’s football.

Arsene Wenger said to me, at the Emirates last season, that I had created a rod for my own back and I was a victim of my own success and after I thanked him for the stuffing at the end of the game, I also thanked him for his programme notes because he said after what I had achieved over the last number of years that ‘this boy has something special’, so that was a great bit of encouragement for me.