of a small, lower league stadium in England. I was excited to make a start with my first club in Singapore.

I met the staff and players in a hotel where I gave my presentation, in which I wanted to introduce new ideas and change a few things.

Pre-season is when everything started going wrong. The players were ready for changes, but implementing that was a completely different story. They were a close group of players. It was a group effect whereby some players will follow others in what they do. The foreign players also had to adapt to that.

I was undermined by the staff, but this wasn’t a deliberate attempt to be negative. It was the culture for them. Everyone would report back to the Chairman – people indidn’t expect to win the league that season but we won it ahead of schedule. We put a decent run together where we won our last four games. The squad was a very good unit that year.

Halfway through the following season, I was sacked. This was a communicated as a mutual agreement. It didn’t come as a major surprise. From September the previous year, I had already started planning for the following season by getting players signed on and looking at potential targets. I wanted to retain as many players as possible but due to the slow response from the management, I lost a few players like Hassan Sunny who was S-League Player of the Year in 2014.

I wanted to retain as many players as possible but due