It turned out that the chairman hadn’t been able to get who he really wanted to replace Steve. So he called me.

I knew it was a brilliant opportunity, and one that might not come my way again. But it was a stressful one.

All of a sudden, I was on a fast track of learning. Every meeting I was in and every experience was brand new to me. Nothing I’d done up to that point in my life had really prepared me for any of it.

I couldn’t hide from that. I think everybody knew I wasn’t completely ready, but I was fortunate to have some good, experienced coaches around me that really helped enormously – people like Steve Harrison and Malcolm Crosby. Without their support initially, it would have been really difficult.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that it was the biggest achievement of my life”

One of the hardest things as a new coach is that you don’t have any evidence of what works. You have an idea in your mind of how you think things should be run, but you don’t actually have evidence of the results until you’ve lived through it.

You’re constantly being challenged by everybody. Your every decision is questioned. Alongside all of that, you have questions in your own mind.

Should we be training like this? Should we be training as intensely? Should we be signing this player?

Until you can build up those experiences, it’s very difficult as a manager to be convincing to everybody else. That’s why it’s a much better pathway to work with young players first, so that you get an understanding of how people learn, how you need to coach, how you want to play and what that looks like on the training pitch.

That’s all before you start adding things in like recruiting players, operating in the transfer market, how to deal with the media and with running a club.

Sometimes I ask myself, was it a good decision to take it on? There’s certainly better pathways than the one I took, that’s for sure.