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JP
Onto the coaching changes that you have made, Graham Kavanagh is being retained as a player, there was some confusion on that one, he is being retained as a player. But he is making a move up to be your assistant manager, tell us more about that.
GA
What we have done is again the backroom staff is a team, and you are putting people in the positions you think you will get the best out of. So we have shuffled it around a bit, I did at the end of season awards say that Kav was hanging up his boots, that is true to an extent but he is not hanging them up 100%.
He will be registered as a player and if we think we need him, he will do the pre-season but he is going to assist on the coaching side. Because the coaching job and the amount of time we spend on the coaching pitch has to improve and has to be more and it is a two man job.
We need to work units, we need to work our back four, we need to work with our midfield, we need to work with our attackers at different times and sometimes split the groups up. So generally if you work with your defenders, the attackers don't pay attention and vice-versa.
So we want two coaches on there doing their work to make sure the message does get through of what we want at either end of the field. I think Kav is ideally suited at this time to do that, he was at first when I mentioned it to him in November reluctant because it meant pulling the curtain down on his playing career 100%.
But he sees it as a fantastic opportunity to start his career as a coach and assistant and learn of how it all works, and hopefully, and I have no doubt one day he will go on to be a manager. If he decides in the future to apply for jobs he will get my full backing. He is ambitious but at the minute he enjoys working with me and I enjoy him being around.
Dennis (Booth's) situation is going to be that we are going to give him a free role, he is going to play just behind the front two if you like in coaching terms. He is going to go and have an input in everything from making reports on other teams and on potential targets.
He is going to look at the youth team play and what is coming through there. He is going to work on looking at the discipline side of things at youth team level and reserve level, and also watch our games, but he will sit in the stand and he will give an overview of everything.
So Dennis is a knowledge of wealth and wealth of experience where we think that is the best place to use him. Rather than have him on the training field where he is not an out and out coach is Dennis, contrary to what people might think, he is not an out and out coach.
I think coaches need to be young and energetic and enthusiastic and whilst he has got more enthusiasm than anybody I have ever known, his legs have gone. He understands that and he is going to contribute probably more by doing this role where we will probably see him two or three times a week than he would do by being here every day, and letting me and Kav do the running round on the training field.
But listen, when you put your right-winger at centre-forward and play him out of position, the right-winger has got to want to do that. Dennis can't wait to do this new role, he is so excited that he is going to be part of it 150% rather than 100%.
He is going to work with Kav and myself, he is going to work with the youths, he is going to work with the scouts, he is going to look at opposition. I just think it is a fantastic role and we have probably got the best in the country to do it.
JP
Just explain more on the scouting aspect on what he will be doing as well, because he has been doing a lot of that towards the end of this season. Presumably finding these targets that you are hoping to get in fairly soon?
GA
Well we have got four scouts there that are part-time, I say part-time, they work and they go and watch the games for us. It is their job to co-ordinate a group of players, what they will do then, they filter them through to me.
Then as a backroom staff we will look at the twenty names, we will get that down to ten so we have always got ten that we are looking at very, very closely. Dennis will go out and say that he needs to watch player x who plays for Manchester United's reserves because he thinks he is better than the player we have got in our first-team.
So when Dennis comes to me and says to go and watch player x, Kav and myself will go out and watch player x, see if we think he is better than the players we have got in that particular position and then if he is we make inroads in trying to bring him into the club. So it is a pretty black and white uncomplicated system.
JP
He is also very important for morale I would have thought around the club is Dennis Booth?
GA
Yeah, that is another one of his strengths, I mean certainly last season when we were at the wrong end of the table, the one person that lifted me was Dennis Booth. He is a very loyal and honest man and sometimes he told me stuff I didn't want to hear, sometimes he tells the players stuff they don't want to hear.
But 99 times out of a 100 he says the right thing and he is an inspiration and an energy to the players when things aren't quite going right. I think sometimes Dennis is at his best when the chips are down, and that is that probably real good characters are like that.
You look at some of our players and we have got some players like that. When the chips are down you look to a certain few to raise their game, and certainly Dennis is one of them that will do that.
I don't get too downbeat when we have not achieved and I don't get too excited when I think we genuinely have achieved. You look at it on paper in terms of financially I think the club made money, I think we are ahead of the game. We finished 14th, one win off being in the top twelve, tremendous cup run in the Johnstone's Paints, terrific in the FA Cup, and the best in 35 years in the League Cup.
I think people have to take stock and look at the obstacles in our way and look at what we have actually achieved, and think actually, and I don't like saying it because people maybe think I am trying to flavour my own position, the football club, including the fans, have achieved one hell of a lot this season.
Absolutely nothing can detract from that and nothing will change my opinion that the football club has come on leaps and bounds. The job now is expectations will be higher and hence the retained and released list that we are all getting a little bit excited about. The squad is the key now for me to improve to try to build on what we have done.
You have to look at that from now on, what are the expectations for next season? I know what my expectations are, fans will always have maybe an obscure expectation. You look at the Premier League, Arsenal think they should be winning the league, and we spoke about this the other night, Arsenal fans think they should be winning the league.
Fulham fans think they should be in the Champions League, Burnley fans think they should have probably finished mid-table and the Hull fans think they should have finished about 16th or 17th. So they have always got expectations above, possibly sometimes realism.
But we have our own expectations for next season and we will compound them and give them some idea of what they are come August 1st when we are a week before the season and we can look at what we might or might not achieve. But I think we have got to have some realistic goals and we will be going hell for leather to try to do that.
JP
On the deals that you have offered, Danny Livesey, Tom Aldred, Andy Cook, whereabouts are you along with those? Do they have a period of time which you need them to answer on those.
GA
I think they have got 28 days from the time we gave them the deals, Danny has had his in his hand for a while now. So I would hope that things would wrap themselves up in the very near future.
JP
Danny Livesey of course, a key part of the back-line for a great deal of years, do you have any indication on how confident you are that he will be signing for Carlisle?
GA
Well he shook my hand and I don't know how much a handshake means anymore. But he has actually shook my hand to say he has agreed in principle, I think there are one or two little minor details to be sorted which I think are getting done as we speak.
Hopefully by the end of the week that will be done but I don't want to put a time limit on it and then somebody says it hasn't happened, and then I am quoted of getting something wrong. But they are very close I think to agreeing and hopefully that doesn't have any more hiccups and it is sorted out.
JP
You say "they", I presume Tom Aldred and Andy Cook will hopefully be a bit more straight-forwards, what was it about what they have shown you that made you think they were worth new deals?
GA
Well I think Andy is a goalscorer, there are flaws in Andy's game, but the one thing Andy has got in his locker is that he is a goalscorer. He had a long-term injury last season and as a young player, that we didn't know too much about, because he has done work at lower levels, he has not done any work really at senior level just yet.
We had to give him an opportunity and the costs that are involved are relatively low, it is up to him to grasp that opportunity and improve and hopefully get another deal. His key is probably to get another deal at the end of this season.
Tom Aldred has come into the team and done OK hasn't he, he has proved that if anything happens to our more senior players right now that he can come in and do a job. The aim for Tom is to push those players 100% and try to make a centre-half position his own, that is his next realistic goal I would say.
JP
Some fans on Tom Aldred have questioned whether a one-year deal was wise given that if he does continue to progress the way he has then next season you might be faced with clubs taking him away from you again?
GA
Yeah, that is right, but he is actually not entitled to a Bosman so it gives us a little bit more power. Infact just this very week on the fans concerns there I actually talked myself into thinking I should be, after his four games that he played in the first-team, altering his deal to make that a two-year deal. So we have got that at our disposal if we so wish but that will be something I will be talking to the board about as well.
JP
So there is an option on his deal or are you saying you have not sorted that yet?
GA
No, it is something that I have thought about since he has come into the team and played his four games. So it is something that I will be putting to the board and seeing if they agree with me, and if I think we can put a deal together that is better for us, for the football club, and for Tom then it will be done. If Tom is comfortable with it as a one-year then we go with that because ultimately he has got to put his pen on the paper.
JP
With Richard Keogh as you said, we are not 100% sure whether there isn't some faint hope left in that one, should he go given his age what is the situation regarding the Bosman ruling there?
GA
We are covered with Richard in terms of we will get a fee for him. So Richard if he did decide to go to another club and a deal was not agreed then it would be a tribunal.
JP
I could be wrong on this one but I had heard reports that if he went to Scotland that wouldn't necessarily be the case, do you know anything on that?
GA
Er, we are not 100% sure, that is something that I only found out this morning so I will be looking into that. If that is the case then it actually goes against the grain if Richard is looking at geography-wise going nearer to home and he goes to Scotland which is another two hours further away. So I would be disappointed if he chose to go north and maybe he has got his map upside down, but I will leave that one with Richard.
JP
Just a final question because in amongst all of this obviously there is a lot of second guessing from fans and questioning of your decisions. In time I guess and with experience you will get rid of a lot of that from fans, they will believe in what you are saying, but as a young manager I suppose it must be quite hard for you to have every single person just about involved with the football club questioning what you are doing?
GA
It is not hard at all, I am getting used to it.
JP
Slowly?
GA
I am just getting used to it, from day one it has been like that. Every decision you make in football gets questioned by every manager out there and the managers are the fans and everybody else, even the people in the club.
But we make these decisions because we think they are the right decisions. The task now is accept that, everybody has got to accept them now and then hopefully we rectify the situation by bringing in a squad that is capable of improving on what we have just done.