GRAHAM TAYLOR

Football needs its roots, it needs its connection with the supporters. But those in charge seem to think they can do without them.

To be really happy, we must throw our hearts over the bar and hope that our bodies will follow.

The biggest thing I've found since I left the game - and I'm glad I chose to leave rather than being sacked - is that so many people are in football for the wrong reasons. Not because they love the game, but because they smell money.

Shearer could be at 100 per cent fitness, but not peak fitness.

I have to choose my words carefully because I don't want to sound like one of those who goes on about how things were better in my day.

In international football you have 10 games a season, with players from different clubs. There's no time for proper coaching; they're just recovering from playing on the Saturday.

In club football you have your players and staff with you all the time, preparing for two games a week, you know them inside out, you have a discipline over them.

It's the only way we can lose, irrespective of the result.

In football, time and space are the same thing.

Very few of us have any idea whatsoever of what life is like living in a goldfish bowl, except, of course, for those of us who are goldfish.

You go to Holland, France, Germany, every community, the tiniest village, they have magnificent, pristine sports facilities.

Being an ex-England manager, one that failed to qualify for the World Cup, is like being a dead politician.

Agents do nothing for the good of football. I'd like to see them lined up against a wall and machine-gunned ?some accountants and solicitors with them.

He's a player you only miss when he's not playing

I'd never allow myself to let myself call myself a coward.

If it stays as it is I can't see it altering.

Is he ever going to learn?

Napoleon wanted his generals to be lucky. I don't think he would have worked with me.

People always remember the second half.

Very few great goals actually go in.

The ambition of an England manager should be to become England manager.

I made the Dixie Heights High School baseball team as an 8th grader and went on to have a very successful career. I was all state both my junior and senior years leading our team 3 district championships and 1 regional championship in 2001 which hadn't happened since 1991. My number has since been retired at Dixie Heights and a banner hangs from the outfield fence with my name and number on it.

There's a famous saying: "If you pass the square ball in your own defensive third it must not be intercepted."

When I got drafted I was sitting at home with my Mom watching the draft live on the internet when my name popped up on the screen. We both jumped up in joy and I immediately called my Dad who was out of town for work. Everyone was thrilled and then about 10 minutes late Matt Anderson (the Marlins scout who drafted me) called to give me the news as well and to start negotiating a contract.