Collison laments Zola departure

  • by Staff Writer
  • Saturday, 4th September 2010

Young Hammers midfielder Jack Collison has admitted that he was disappointed with the decision to fire Gianfranco Zola at the end of last season.

The 22-year-old Welsh international, talking on Soccer AM this morning revealed that he was sad to see the back of the Italian, who was fired by Karren Brady following the culmination of the 2009/10 campaign.

"He was the one who gave me my big chance and I feel like I owe him a lot," said Collison. "He took an interest in a lot of the young lads and for me it was great learning off someone like him because he wasn't a bad player, was he?

"He could still play; he joined in during training and some of the stuff he would do was pretty unbelievable. The first day in training we were playing two touch; he got the ball, flicked it round the corner and dinked Rob Green. Everyone just stood there and was like' whoa, what have we got here?'!

"He was really good. After training sometimes he'd take the boys for a one-to-one session which was nice to see from a manager, you don't always get that. He took a real interest. He let all the boys go out there and express themselves, which was nice. It's just a shame what happened."

Collison - who last featured for the first team in February - recently underwent an operation to solve a long-standing knee problem, from which he expects to return at the beginning of 2011.

"I'm hoping to be back around Christmas time," he confirmed. "I had an operation about four months ago to stabalise my knee cap and to have a bit of a tidy up.

"I done it properly at Wigan , tried to play on and had a little trouble with it - and eventually it came to this. But fingers crossed, it's gone really well so far. I should be back around Christmas and I'm looking forward to getting back into the action.

"It was nice to get it sorted out, now I'm confident on it and rehab has gone really well. I just can't wait to get back out on the pitch. Luckily my mum looked after me - I moved back in with her, which was nice; I managed to get quite good at FIFA and watched a lot of DVDs! I just tried to get through it as quick as I can to be honest. Obviously [I've been out] a long time but I want to come back and play.

"I had a little bit of work on the cartilege and in one of the knee operations they stabbed little holes in it and made a new scar, so it was quite complicated stuff. But the machine [I was using] smooths out the scar and makes it alright."

And with regards to the club's poor start to the 2010/11 campaign - and Zola's replacement, Avram Grant - he said:

"The new manager seems good, he's quite friendly, he comes over and says 'hello'. At the moment I'm in getting physio every day so it's nice to be in and around the boys, to be in the mix. But I think they've all reacted really well to him. Obviously he's bringing in his own ideas and it's up to us now to start picking up a few points.

"Obviously it's not a great start to the season, no-one wants to start like that. But the new manager's got his own ideas, the way he wants to play and maybe it's going to take a little while to adapt. But it's only early days - and we've got a nice easy one next week against Chelsea, so hopefully we'll start picking up points there!"

* Something to say about this story? Please visit the KUMB Forum to leave a comment.



More News