YOU might expect a man born on February 14 to save a place in his heart for something special and for Hans Backe it is English football.

City's new assistant manager cannot get enough of the game over here and has turned his back on a cushy job as Swedish Television's top pundit to brave the dangers of a Manchester summer.

Backe, after working for a week without official status, was finally officially confirmed as Eriksson's No 2 before the Blues left for Varberg and a mini-tour of the management team's homeland.

The engaging 55-year-old Backe attracted almost as much attention as Sven when Scandinavia's dynamic duo landed on Sunday night and it is not hard to see why.

Easy going, always ready for a laugh and smile, Backe is quite clearly a football man and an extremely good communicator. He will need both skills as he and his old friend Sven plot a way up the Premier League for their new club.

A player at four different Swedish clubs in his youth, Backe has also worked as a manager in Denmark, Austria and Greece, finding most success in the first named country where he landed four titles with FC Copenhagen and AaB.

He has been friends with Eriksson for almost 30 years and jumped at the chance to finally work alongside him.

"I have known Sven since the early 80s when we were both managers back home," he revealed. "He always stood out as someone different in Swedish football. At that time the country's coaches took their lead mainly from what was happening in Germany but Sven was probably the first person to look to England, to possession football and to zonal play.

"He changed the way a lot of people thought about the game and in a way created a revolution at that time. When he moved abroad, I always visited him at all the clubs where he has been the head coach."

It might be difficult to imagine the mild-mannered bespectacled Sven that we know from his days with England as a revolutionary but Backe clearly knows that what you see with the City boss is not anywhere near all that you get.

Instructions

"Neither of us are very animated people on the pitch side during games. Like Sven, I am a calm person by nature," Backe continued.

"If you are still jumping up and down and barking out lots of instructions for the whole game, it is probably fair to say that you have not done your job during the week - I would even say you have done a bad job.

"Of course, sometimes it is necessary to change things around and get fresh instructions on to the pitch, but there is a lot of show that goes on all over Europe these days from coaches in the technical areas.

"Television and the fans expect you to be waving your arms around and shouting, even though the players probably cannot hear you anyway. It is probably a survival mechanism."

Backe has not yet had to raise his voice or throw his arms around in exasperation at his new charges who have clearly impressed him during the early days of training.

And he was happy to explain how the managerial team would operate in practical terms.

"The players here are very lively and very focused, I suppose they have to be given that a new manager has taken over but I have been very pleased with them," he observed.

"You can see straight away that they like to train and that they have good habits and discipline. There is great intensity in the work that they do. English and Swedish mentalities are not too different when it comes to football.

"I will work on the pitch all the time. Sven will ultimately make the decisions about the way we play and the way we train but I will have my input.

"I don't think either Sven or myself will have to radically alter the way we work and we will not try and impose a completely different style on the team.

"If you look at what the foreign coaches at the top teams at Arsenal, Liverpool and Chelsea have done then you see they have just made minor adjustments that allow their players more time on the ball to make better decisions and make sure the balance is correct between forcing games and counter-attacking. That is what we will try to encourage here at City.

"At the moment, we have only 16 or 17 senior players and I do not know who will be coming in so it would be stupid of me to suggest that we will play one system or another. We will all have to wait and see.

"Sven has a philosophy and a way of playing and I think he will buy players that fit that philosophy, not the other way around. He will not just buy players and then devise a system.

"I have been a manager in my own right and people back in Sweden have been asking why I have decided to come here as a No 2 and the answer is simple: The Premiership. There are not many Scandinavian coaches who have had the opportunity to work abroad, let alone in a league that is famous all over the world and contains some of the biggest teams and greatest players.

Decision

"I have been abroad for the last 10 or 11 years as a manager but I am happy to be out on the training ground every day working with the players, building up an understanding between them.

"People back home might say I am a contender to be the Sweden head coach but the team is doing too well.

"They have reached the last five European and World Championships so they will have to have some bad results before they change coach!

"The current staff has done a really brilliant job with so few players from which to choose and whoever is the next man in charge will have a hard job."

Backe has been advising Eriksson on potential transfer targets in Scandinavia and other parts of the continent and both he and Tord Grip are on hand to help Eriksson - but ultimately it is the manager's decision.

"Sven asks my opinion of players because he knows I have been watching a lot of football recently all over Europe and Tord is also having his say," revealed Backe.

"It is really hard work to find the kind of players we want. They have to be the right age and the right character and the scouting is very important. The Premiership is a hard place to play football so when you bring someone in from abroad you have to be sure that they can survive in English football.

"We are talking every hour, every day to find alternatives for different positions. We clearly do not have enough players at the moment. Sven is living with a mobile phone at his ear and he is determined to make sure he gets the right people. He doesn't want to be blind buying or anything like that."

Backe is in the process of moving to Manchester where he promises to be on hand to help the club in any way he can, 24 hours a day.

"I am moving here and my family will visit me every month or so," he confirmed.

"It is a big commitment for me but if I am here alone then I can do as much work as possible for the club.

"Since being sacked from my job in Greece at Panathinaikos - where the results were not that bad - I have worked as a soccer analyst for Swedish TV but to get this job in the Premiership with City is as good as it gets for a Scandinavian coach. It's one I simply couldn't turn down and one I aim to make the most of."

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