INTO THE UNKNOWN As a player, I always envisioned that I would eventually morph into a coach/manager once my playing career was finally over. The confidence that I had in my own beliefs on how the game should be approached made me keen to uncover whether imparting those beliefs to others would be a success or not.

Although it was completely new to me, I thought that I was coming into the role with my eyes very much open in terms of what was needed. I should however have paid more attention to a thought process made famous by ex US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld when he said “There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know.” For all of my experience in football, I hadn't anticipated for the amount of mental energy that the different aspects would expend.

An example of an unknown unknown that I encountered was that I had never anticipated how much my football brain would suddenly love to spark to life as soon as my head hit the pillow at night time.

During the day, when I’m at work and I'm distracted by the all the tasks I have to do then I can keep football thoughts at bay. Similarly when I get home, I have the company and conversation of my fiancée to enjoy or on the rare occasion I get control of the remote control, I can watch some TV or a film.

It has taken me by surprise by how much my sleep patterns are affected. There must be something about the mix of quietness and darkness that ignites the synapses in your brain into contemplating the pressing quandaries of your life. For me, my thoughts turn to who I have available for the next game, what formation will I play them in, how will the opposition set up, etc. It continues to amaze me how long you can ponder such things before tiredness finally overcomes you. Also, it worries me ever so slightly that the myriad of my night time thoughts have at times consisted of Kevin Struthers hamstring, Creag Little’s holiday plans or even Sean Pierce’s pregnant wife!

There is no doubt that being parachuted into a relegation dogfight was a big factor in my chronic lack of sleep. As soon as we were appointed both myself and Arnie agreed that, even from the difficult position we were in, to get relegated would be regarded as a failure. At no point did I ever believe that we would go down. It was always just about finding the correct path to recovery and so as the games ticked down, I think I unconsciously applied more and more pressure to myself to find a way out which took a toll on each nights sleep.

One of the known unknowns that that I didn't factor in was the man-management side. Don't get me wrong, I was more than aware of this side of the job and being the social chameleon that I am, I was confident that I could deal with it all comfortably. The challenging part of it though has been the amount of time that needs to be spent on making sure that every player's needs are being met.

I knew that I had a squad of 18-20 players to work with however until I started actually dealing all of the them all on a regular basis, I really wasn't aware of the amount of time that would be spent ironing out everything from their personal issues to their game related development. I would say that the main part of our job is the individual development of each player day to day so that they are at their optimum come game day and are straining at the lease to play. To this point in our role, I would say that our individual relationships with the players are the most important part of the job. Given the progress so far, I would say that Arnie and I have the balance right at the moment and if we can continue to get this aspect correct, then the majority of the time we’ll be on the right track.

Although I view that aspect as a positive, my overall conclusion of our management term thus far only indicates that we appear to be good at fire-fighting taking into consideration the extinguishing of the flames of relegation that were licking at our backsides last season. Whether we can transfer that in to success at the other end of the League is a completely different matter and the judge of that won't be through my self-assessment but rather the passage of time, the fans and the committee. We hope that by making the right decisions, all three will continue to be kind to us.