Future of British football is safe

EVERYONE relax . . . the future of British football is safe. Eight of us Blackpool players have started a coaching course.

We always moan and groan when we are training so this is our chance to show how great we can be at coaching and prove there can be good English managers¿although I think it may be harder than it looks!

The stage we are going for is the Level 3 UEFA B license. After this one there are two more levels, UEFA A and the Pro license.

The Pro license is the badge you are supposed to need to manage in the Premier League, although it seems if you're high-profile enough you can just by pass this - Gareth Southgate, Roy Keane and so on.

We have been told that by 2010 UEFA insist you have the Pro license, if not and your team qualify for Europe they will be excluded from the competition, so Sunderland and Middlesbrough should be safe.

I have been getting some stick off the lads and they're all saying, 'Any course going and you will be on it, how many jobs do you want when you quit football?'

Well ultimately I would love to be a manager and I with the variety of gaffers I have played under I definitely have the experience to draw on. Some of those managers were good, some not so good and some down right terrible.

Peter Taylor at Hull City would always put on good sessions and you could tell how much he loved football by his enthusiasm.

Sometimes he would join in training, one time his team got beat quite heavily and he was so angry that he made both teams run for ages afterwards, which seemed a little unfair on the victorious team.

In my Blackburn youth team days, me and another YTS player Stuart Howson went to train with the first team.

The pitch was wet, so when Stuart closed down boss Graeme Souness he slipped and it appeared like he was lunging at him. Souness promptly jumped to avoid the challenge and came down with his studs slicing Stuarts shin. He has the scar to this day.

The manager who worked me the hardest by far was Ian Dowie in my brief time at Oldham.

There would often be three sessions a day including swimming, running and gym work.

You couldn't complain because Dowie was at the front doing everything we did.

My first day with him was in the boxing gym. I was told to kneel down, while he and another player would punch me from the side (with gloves on) and I had to try and block all the blows!

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