When you talk about professional footballers, rightly or wrongly, people often already have an idea in their head about what they're like; they'll paint a picture before they've met them.
I've been in football a long time and one thing you don't do is when things are going well, you don't get carried away. And when they don't, you stay positive.
Every time I manage Wales and you win, the feeling is better than I've ever had as a club manager.
If you want to become a professional football player at any level, when you're growing up, you have to make sacrifices, and it's very difficult. It's not easy, but you have to train hard, you have to live right, and you have to rest.
Even when I was growing up as a young boy, when I was playing schoolboy football, there were other guys who were as good as I was, maybe some even better technically. But I was prepared to stick to what was going to make me become a professional football player when I left school, and that was a lot of sacrifice and because my attitude was right.
As long as my guys are out there and doing what I'm asking, and they're giving their best, I don't think anybody can ask for much more than that.
Since I was five or six years old, I just wanted to be a professional football player. I wanted to play against the best players. I wanted to play in big stadiums in front of big crowds, and I was desperate to play for my country one day, and thankfully, I was lucky enough that happened.
For me, the training has to be a mixture of hard work - it has to have a good structure, a good base - but also, I don't want all my players to be like machines.
My dad was Dublin born and bred - a Dublin boy - but he always pushed me to play for what was Wales Under-15s in my day.
You have to do a lot of planning, certainly in football. We watch the opposition three or four times before we play them.
When you are in an international camp, you are together for 10 days. You eat three times a day together. You spend a lot of time in each other's company. That 10 days is very important ,and I think even times for training, times when you eat, meetings, this that and the other, a lot has got to change in that camp.
Sometimes in football, the best team does not necessarily win; it's the team that plays best on the day that prevails.
When I was playing, I always preferred to be meeting a side like the Faroe Isles or San Marino early doors. Do things right in those games, and you knew you would get six points on the board, at least be up and running and challenging in the group.
I think everybody is under the impression that everyone wants to work in the Premier League. I want to work at the top level like everyone else, but it doesn't mean that's the Premier League.
When you're playing for Real Madrid, even when you're playing well, you're under scrutiny.
I won't tolerate players not giving everything they've got.
The biggest word in football, and it's a dirty word - no one likes to use it - is accountability.
There's not many Premier League clubs as big as Sunderland, with their fanbase and stadium and facilities.
I've got the opportunity to manage a big football club, a seriously big football club, and I wasn't going to turn that down.
If you ask any manager after a defeat, you want to be as far away from it as you can.
