Steve Nicol Quotes

I’m proud of my record at the Revs – 299 games, 110 wins, 108 draws, 81 losses – but even if I was to get the chance to coach those last two years again – 2010 and 2011 – I reckon I’d still have found it difficult to ensure a different outcome.

I’m very thankful to the Krafts for giving me the opportunity to be their head coach. I’ve had some great times and been involved with some great players and great people.

When your touch goes, it starts biting into your confidence as well.

A big reason why you take a chance on a 34-year-old who has bags of experience, is a great player is to pass that on to your younger players.

I do my best every day that I come to work.

Part of playmaking is communication, when you have nobody on the field talking, particularly when you are under pressure, it becomes twice as hard.

I love the way managers and coaches can spin people signing a new contract into telling us it’s a transfer, ‘these are our transfers.’

A successful team, at the very least they do the basics well, and then they add their own quality on top of that.

Crisps, pies, pizzas, coke – I was a bit of a human dustbin. But my philosophy was: ‘Ach, I’ll burn it off at training.’ And I did.

There are a whole load of different pressures that go with being the head coach, manager, whatever you want to call it. And everybody who’s done it, there are times when it becomes too much and you need some sort of break while you figure out how you de-stress, if you want.

Obviously, if you go to any football club in the world, you’re going to get guys taking the mickey out of one another, but I would say that in Liverpool it was a lot closer to the knuckle.

Sometimes you just need bodies in the squad.

There are certain things you have to do to make a pass.

I loved room service.

You don’t just turn up and have a passing game. You can’t sit back, you have to be 100 percent concentrated to make it work.

Two of my most important signings were made at the beginning of 2004. I took 20-year-old Clint Dempsey with the eighth pick of the MLS SuperDraft and added 51-year-old ex-Arsenal striker Paul Mariner as my assistant on a free transfer from Harvard University, where he’d been coaching.

Listen, there’s always a pitfall around the corner somewhere. You know it’s coming, you don’t know when it’s going to come.

It is hard to win away from home in MLS.

We always talk about experience and maturing, the best thing that can happen to a footballer is the game slows down for them. All of a sudden, they can see things, they can see passes, they can see space, the whole game opens up for them.

It doesn’t get any more basic than your backline closing when there’s no pressure on the ball. It really is a huge problem if you get it wrong.

Eat like a horse? Fine, just not six bags of crisps on a matchday!

At the end of the day, if you want to go somewhere you can make it happen.

Landon Donovan has always been about being the focal point of the team.

That’s part of Jurgen Klopp’s job, is to psychologically find out how to get his players playing.

It’s the same with most injuries, different players take different amounts of time.

I know the ‘Have a nice day’ attitude gets mocked but I like America’s positivity. When I go back to Scotland folk seem so miserable.

If the guys up front don’t get possession, they can’t score.

I’ve always felt I’ve made a contribution wherever I’ve been.

I am a coach so I wouldn’t call for someone to be sacked.

I’m a real believer in getting on with the job you have – anything that happens in the future is dictated by what you do now.

Unless you’ve been in the job as a head coach, and certainly at the Premier League level and elite level, it’s stressful. You’re responsible for everything. You’re responsible for how the team plays, if they don’t turn up you’re responsible for that, your job is to get them playing.

I think sometimes it’s a little bit dangerous to change things when clearly they’re working.

As great as Sadio Mane is, John Barnes is one of the best players I have ever played with – and I’ve played with a lot of good players at Liverpool.

That feeling when I got the New England Revolution job on a permanent basis was one of relief, similar to when I signed for Sheffield Wednesday – I knew I was capable of doing a job at a decent level again but I just needed someone to believe in me.

The problem I had with Raheem Sterling when he left Liverpool was not the fact that he was leaving Liverpool. Any professional footballer wants to go to where they think they’re going to win things, where the money is and everything else and that was Manchester City.

Everyone in sport loves winning – that’s why we get involved – but there are different ways to win.

The bottom line is it’s a pleasure to be working for the Kraft family.

You can’t pick and choose when you are going to be at your best.

When you change your lineups all the time, you lose that continuity. It’s all over the place.

Man United under Fergie were about winning Champions League titles and winning Premier League titles.

The game is all about doing the basics well, then you’ve got a chance.

I just try and do my best every day of the week, and not look too far ahead. It’s the old Liverpool style – you get it done and everything else comes to you.

I think Sadio Mane is lucky the way Liverpool play. His job is pretty much to stay on one half of the field. Yes, he does come back and help out defensively every now and again, but generally he’s told to stay in the attacking half of the field and go at defenders.

There aren’t enough guys who take it personally if they get beat one on one.

During my first eight years at the Revs we drafted really well, but I got very little from the last two drafts that I took part in.

Teams that come up, as soon as they realise they’re in big trouble the first thing they do is change the manger.

Winning is the deodorant of the game, it covers all bad smells.

Not everybody is like Bobby Robson, going on forever.

The Kraft family does it in the proper way. They genuinely care about their teams and who is involved with their teams. If you put it in simple terms, Mr Kraft is a great businessman and the guy is in the business of winning.

If you’ve got Godin and Chiellini as your centre-backs, then you can have more attacking full-backs, as opposed to defensive ones.