At every club I coached, we were the first team to start pre-season. I always liked to be first, to come back earlier and take things slowly. Step by step, to avoid injuries. Sometimes, if you come back later, you can overload players in training, and they get hurt.

For me, the first week was for tests – medical checks, blood tests, radiographies – and to take a look at how the players had taken care of themselves during the holidays. Kind of a refresher course.

When we started at Fulham, the players were carrying a few too many kilos. I brought in a dietician to create more balanced dishes, but we changed everything. After that, no alcohol. No beer after the match. No. See you later.

I wanted everyone on an equal footing. If I saw in the morning that some players were bleary-eyed, they went to see the doctor and had a little test.

This approach gave us an enormous advantage. Physically, the players blossomed.

An example: when I arrived, Rufus Brevett was injured, trained alone, limped all the time. Soon, he was transformed. He had three magnificent years.

“When you don’t have the ball, you are not strong. You are obliged to fight to get it back. So we don’t lose the ball. We keep it”

That first season, promotion wasn’t an aim. It was an obligation. We had to go straight up to the Premier League.

The first player I wanted was John Collins.

On the pitch, John (below, right) was hyper-intelligent. In his positioning, in his movement.

Off the pitch, he was something different. I had signed him when I was coach at Monaco, and in three months he was speaking French fluently. That’s crazy. He was always studying, always listening to the other players. He was close to them immediately, and in six months it was like he had been at Monaco forever. Of all the footballers I have known, either as player or coach, he is the one who adapted quickest.