Gus Poyet is on the hunt for a new job and has given an insight into his life as a manager, how he told the Chelsea board to bring in more ex-players and what it was like to play for the Blues before Roman Abramovich's takeover.
The Uruguayan has managed the likes of Brighton, Sunderland, Real Betis and Bordeaux since retiring from the playing side of the game, although his experience with the latter left him feeling a sense of 'what if' after his acrimonious departure.
He is, however, looking to get back into the management game and has revealed how he has had offers from certain clubs while their head coach has still been in place.
"I had a phone call the other day from a club that was struggling and the guy started explaining to me the situation. Their coach was still there, it shouldn't happen but it does happen," Poyet told Goal.
"It feels awful to talk to someone when you know someone else is in a job but you know the same thing has happened to you in the past. You get sacked and 12 hours later there is a new coach. They explained: 'we have a coach we respect him but we need to make another plan'.
"I ask them a question: 'what’s your aim?' Depending on the answer, I am interested in it or not. If the team is doing really bad and the aim should simply be survival and then he says 'top 10', I would say 'no thanks'. I am not interested because that’s not realistic.
"I try to measure the quality of the job by being realistic. When I see something that is not going in the same way that we discussed, then it is not going to work. 90 per cent of the time I kept quiet about these expectations in the job and it didn’t work.
"In Bordeaux, I decided to say it. Nothing else. I didn’t want to be problematic. People just usually don’t know what’s going on in the manager’s head. If you go and get sacked, you get a payout with a confidentiality clause not to talk. So now people will never know.
"I went to that press conference to say the truth. I had a few meetings with people from clubs in the last couple of years and they ask me the same question about Bordeaux. 'What happened here?' I say, 'why?' They point to the reports. I say 'that’s not true'.
"I am looking for a chairman or president who I can work with. That’s more important than the name of the club. I think when we were young, I would look at the name and say 'I want to play for this club'. Not anymore.
"I think in France they weren’t used to a person like me. I accept that because I am this kind of person. It is easier to put something in the paper that is more negative than positive. When you open newspapers nowadays, the main news is bad.
"You see it in Brexit and football is becoming the same. We talk [Mauricio] Pochettino, Marco Silva and [Ole Gunnar] Solskjaer ahead of [Jurgen] Klopp, Bournemouth being brilliant or Leicester’s great football. The good things don’t sell and it can be unfair and hard.
"In any job you should set up a goal and decide how you do it. It is then up to me to deliver. I am 51 but I look 70. If you don’t say the truth then no one will say it.
"At Brighton they wanted me to get up [promoted] because they were moving to the Amex Stadium. Up! I sat down with Sunderland. One point in the last seven games. They said 'get us safe'. We did it. I went to AEK Athens. We were 17 points behind Olympiakos.
"The league was impossible but they wanted us to finish second and a goal was to stop them going unbeaten. We beat them 1-0 and finished second. I admit Betis didn’t work for me. I take it. It was me and I didn’t do the right research. I can’t blame anyone. It didn’t work.
"China is different and Bordeaux was an exception. People want to label you over the bad things. I am taking my time and I am not jumping into any job. My idea is to come back here to the UK."
Poyet has also revealed how he chatted with the Chelsea board about the idea of bringing in more ex-players in coaching roles, with there now the presence of many former Blues at the club, including, of course, Frank Lampard.
"I saw that other top teams like Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Barcelona and AC Milan had important ex-players as either the manager or coaches around the team," Poyet added. "It was around the time Chelsea had [Carlo] Ancelotti, who was a fantastic coach but he didn’t have Chelsea players around him as a core.
"I met some of the board and chairman at the time. They were listening to me and I think they thought I wanted a coaching role. That wasn’t my idea. My idea was to see more ex-players around at Cobham. I am sure it wasn’t down to me but it was great that Chelsea started bringing people back."
Chelsea now has the strongest core of English players that they have had for more than a decade although on Boxing Day in 1999, Gianluca Vialli's Blues became the first team in top-flight history to play without an English player.
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"It was very strange for the time," Poyet continued. "We had an English goalkeeper, a Russian, Italians, Norwegians and Uruguay. Everything. We needed each other. We were away from home. Some of us were away from our families. We needed it.
"We had a leader in Dennis Wise, who was a strong character. The more the players grew up, the more they brought that strength of character. Look at Marcel Desailly. The first time in Premier League history we played without an English player and I was the captain in the game against Southampton.
"I remember going out and saying 'what’s happening?' They told me: 'we are playing for the first time ever without any Englishmen'. The reaction of us was that 'we must win'. We are going to get hammered if we don't. We did win.
"That was a turning point for football in England. That togetherness and understanding of what we needed to do was very good, when the top teams began to have individual rooms in hotels.
"Me and Dan Petrescu preferred to stay together because that was our moment to hang out and talk about football. If you are on your own, you would have a day-and-a-half on your own. We were all very good friends and that made it much easier to play.
"I am still friends with Dan, Roberto Di Matteo, Gianfranco Zola and Carlo Cudicini. I meet with Desailly in France or Chapi Ferrer in Spain. It was good for us to play together against Real Madrid [in a legends match]. I saw Frank Sinclair and Danny Granville, who played in my first Chelsea team.
"It was a good time and we have a connection without always seeing each other. I still see Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, who was there at the end of my time at Chelsea."
