Thursday 7 September 2017 16:08, UK
New Hull City boss Leonid Slutsky is loving life in England and is excited by his new "adventure" at the KCOM Stadium.
The Russian had spent his entire 16-year managerial career in his native country before joining the Tigers at the start of the season and, despite the challenging start to the Sky Bet Championship campaign, is revelling in every minute of it.
Slutsky has already seen a huge rebuilding job of the squad, with 13 new players arriving and 10 players depart this summer alone, and those numbers don't even include the horde of loanees who left at the end of last season. Five new players have arrived since their last league game alone, and all could be in action when they travel to Derby on Friday night, live on Sky Sports Football.
"I'm very happy here because it's an adventure for me," he told Sky Sports. "It's been a difficult start because we've had about three teams in the last two months. We started to train one and a lot of players left, we continued training then a lot of players got injured, and now after last week we have five new players!
"But I'm very satisfied with the players who have come in. A lot of them are young and have extra ambition to prove themselves because they played at Arsenal, Liverpool or Chelsea and found it difficult to play there. But everybody has motivation and that's important for me."
Slutsky is a close friend of Roman Abramovich, often staying at the hotel by Stamford Bridge during his previous stays in England and even taking three players - Ola Aina, Michael Hector and Fikayo Tomoro - on loan from Chelsea.
But Slutsky insists that, while the Russian billionaire helped him settle in the country, he played no part in helping him get the job at Hull.
"He couldn't get me help a job, but he helped me adapt to England as a country," said the Hull boss. "He recommended the school [where I learned English], when I was in London I stayed at the hotel at Stamford Bridge and Chelsea helped me get a lot of tickets to matches. Now we have free loan players from there.
"[Abramovich] always calls me and asks about how we played last match, our team and our players. I'm very thankful to him and Chelsea for their helpfulness."
Slutsky has never managed outside of Russia before in his career and, as little as six months ago, he could barely speak a word of English. However, he was determined not to go down the same route as some foreign coaches and use a translator.
"Sometimes I think my English is good and sometimes I think it's very bad! In the last two months I haven't really had time to continue my [lessons] because the transfer window was open," he said.
"Now it's closed maybe I'll continue lessons with a teacher two or three times a week. But not only about football! My conversations are only about football, so maybe my vocabulary will get better after speaking about other problems.
"My football vocabulary is good because I can explain everything. But English guys use a lot of slang words and speak very quickly and I'm like: 'Slowly, please! I'm a stupid foreign guy and my English is not so good!'"
Aside from leading Russia to Euro 2016, where they held England to a 1-1 draw in the group stage before being beaten by Slovakia and Wales to finish bottom of the group, Slutsky had been manager of CSKA Moscow - where they had won three titles in four seasons before his departure after seven years at the helm.
Despite his success, Slutsky was determined to move elsewhere and search for a new challenge, and he is loving life in England so far.
"It's been very interesting for me [in England] and there have been a lot of new situations," he said. "Inside the club everything works like a Swiss clock and it's very professional.
"I'd also like to thank the supporters for their reaction to me and for singing songs about me, as it's the first time in my career that's happened. [I also like] your culture of the away stand where we generally have a minimum of 2,000 supporters, it's very important for us.
"Also in Russia anyone can speak about the club: the owner, the president, everyone. But in England the manager is the speaker for the team, taking all press conferences and all questions about transfers, injuries etc. It's very good for me and my learning process.
"[CSKA] was the best time in my life because it was a really big club. We played about 50 matches in the Champions League, reached a quarter-final and won a lot of titles. I'm thankful to everybody there because I had a really good time, but I felt I must change something in my life and find a new challenge in my career. Now I'm here and I'm very happy at Hull."
Don't miss Hull City's trip to Derby in the Sky Bet Championship on Friday night, live on Sky Sports Football from 7pm
