Q: What can you tell us about the four new signings?

A: All four of them are Premiership quality in my opinion. I’ve brought Simon Royce in because I didn’t feel there was enough competition for the goalkeeper’s shirt. Chris Day has been a great servant to this club – on a par with Steve Palmer – but Royce is better than Day, and Chris should be playing first team football. Royce has earned a lot of money over the years for sitting on the bench. He’s sick of being a sub, and he likes the buzz he gets from the fans at Loftus Road.

I want to move forward with young goalkeepers, none more so than Jake Cole. I’ll be having a good look at him in pre-season and you can expect to see him feature in at least one of the Ibiza friendlies.

Ian Evatt is a big, strong lump of a defender who is so composed on the ball he could play in midfield. This season we need to improve our distribution from defence to attack. Gianni Paladini helped me with this signing and in fact has opened all sorts of doors for me, for example I’ve been able to look at Spanish, Italian and Portuguese players recently thanks to him.

Tommy Doherty is quiet and shy off the pitch, and a pitbull on it. I think some of our players are too nice, but Tommy will dispense justice. When he tackles someone, they stay tackled. Signing Tommy lets me play Kevin Gallen up front.

Stefan Moore gives us something we haven’t had, and that’s the ability to move rapidly onto the ball over the top. He’ll chase paper bags in the wind in the park for you all day long.

I’ll talk about Dean Sturridge as well since we signed him so recently. He had an outstanding season only a couple of years ago but has suffered from hamstring problems that in turn were a result of back problems. Our physio, as he did with Paul Furlong, has had him doing corrective exercises which seem to have done the trick. Yesterday we played a practice match: Gallen scored two, Moore scored one, and Sturridge made two and scored one himself. All three centre forwards looked exceptional. I was also having a look at an Egyptian trialist who isn’t bad.

Q: Can we expect any more signings?

A: I’m still looking for a left back. When Matthew Rose played there he showed me what we were lacking in that position: someone who was tall enough to win headers, and someone who was fast enough to run past Lee Cook who still lacks a little bit of pace. If I sign a left back I can move Rose over to the other side.

Q: How close were we to signing Flo?

A: Very close. We gave him a medical, and he’s the fittest player I’ve ever seen. He would have been an inspiration to the younger players. In the end he decided to go home. He and his family were involved in a big car crash in Italy last year, and his kids are still upset.

Q: What can you tell us about the two young lads we signed from Arsenal?

A: I wanted them for the run-in, but I only found out about their injuries at the eleventh hour before the transfer deadline so I didn’t have time to go and look for anyone else. That said, I’m delighted to have both of them at the club.

Matthew Hislop is 6’ or taller, he’s got a great left foot, and he runs forward like Ashley Cole. As I said, I’m trying to tuck a more senior player into that position to allow Hislop to develop at his own pace.

I’ve never been so excited about a young player as I am about Dominic Shimmin. He’s 17, he’s built like Danny Shittu and is almost as fast, he can play centre back or right back, and he’s played for England at every youth level. He had a big fall-out with Liam Brady; Wenger liked the look of him, but Brady used to say his attitude was wrong. Dominic was late on his first day of training with us, and after what I said to him it hasn’t happened again. I asked him to report back to pre-season training three weeks earlier than the other players, and he said he wanted to go away on holiday for one of those weeks. We talked it through, and I’ve told him I’ll let him go away later on and he’s happy with that.

Gary Waddock is in charge of a new “reserves development group” which consists of six young players who I want him to help make the step up to the first team. They are Matthew Hislop, Scott Donnelly, Shabazz Baidoo, Stefan Bailey, Jake Cole and Dominic Shimmin. If I can’t bring at least two or three of those forward I might as well go home.

Q: Are you pleased with the new training ground?

A: Yes! There are two or three things that really matter to players, and this is one of them. Twyford Avenue is suffering from a lack of investment, and we get bullied by Wasps there. We’ve gone from seven pitches to three. Chelsea spent a fortune on our new training ground, and we’re inheriting the improvements that they made and making a few tweaks ourselves. The dressing rooms, in fact the whole interior of the building is fantastic, and it’s the best gym we’ve ever had. The surfaces are immaculate, and the players will be really excited to see the new facilities when they get back from Ibiza.

Q: A question about tactics last season: when we were defending long balls, why did we play head tennis and usually end up losing the ball?

A: The balance wasn’t quite right last season. Marcus Bignot isn’t always as tall as he could be, and against Wolves Glenn Hoddle, for all the sophisticated football that his teams are supposed to play, really showed us up when he brought Carl Cort on and got them to lump it forward to him.

Our pressing and closing that got us promoted wasn’t good enough last season at Championship level, and that’s one of the reasons why I’ve strengthened the squad. How did we get a point at Wigan? It was like the Alamo, and at Burnley we were awful. The kids who I had to draft in did brilliantly, but I want them to get into the team on merit and stay there on merit.

Q: Did we try to get Sam Parkin and Richard Langley?

A: We looked at Sam, but couldn’t have afforded the £750k that he eventually moved for. We nearly cut a deal with Cardiff, but I didn’t even want to ask Richard Langley if he wanted to halve his wages.

Many thanks to Julia for the report

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