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Tommy Mooney

Moving to Spain is a long-term commitment for me, says Tommy Mooney

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Brand new betting.betfair.com columnist Tommy Mooney pens the first of his pieces all the way from Marbella and tells us all about talking "Spanglish" with his new manager, leaving Walsall behind and why moving to Spain is a long-term project.

A lot of people have said to me that Walsall to Marbella sounds like the transfer of the summer - and yes, I've got to admit that I've really landed on my feet.

I've had a place in Marbella for about five years now, so I've tended to keep in touch with that's going on out there with various things.

Back in January, I was made aware that the football club had some new English owners who were looking to try to build things up over the medium and long-term. That's when my mind first started to think I'd like to be part of that.

I could have stayed - and I had some other offers in England too - but when it became clear the manager, Richard Money, was leaving Walsall I decided to go for it out here in Spain.
Through my agent Rob Segal, I kept in touch with developments at Marbella and, as soon as I came over to watch a couple of games, I knew I wanted to give it a crack.

I've just turned 37 now and I've played in the top five divisions of English football, so this is a move I see as keeping things fresh for me. I absolutely love matchdays - but the day-to-day training in England, the style of it more than anything, I've always found a real grind.

I think coming over when I've still got plenty to offer is important. It's not just a year's football, it's a proper season's contribution to the football club.

This is a complete change and a fantastic opportunity for the family, not just for me. The place we're in has been a holiday villa to us before but now it's home...we're just waiting for the furniture to arrive in fact!

My two children - a daughter who's 10 and my son who's nine - are going to start school in September and they're taking Spanish lessons from this week. We're throwing them in at the deep end, in fact, because it's a local school where only one teacher speaks English. They're going to do 10 hours of Spanish lessons a week for a month or so to get them going, but they'll make friends in a matter of days and be absolutely fine.

It's always been in the back of my mind to live in Spain, or at least abroad. The worst case scenario is that we're here for only a year and we all leave speaking fluent Spanish. But I don't see this as just a year's stay, this for me is a long-term commitment.

Perhaps we knew that in the back of our minds because my wife's already taken Spanish lessons when we were in England, so she's on the way already, and I'm speaking Spanish whenever possible in training.

And in fact my new manager, Jose Luis Montes - who's only been in the job a few months, is being helpful by speaking English to me. I try to speak Spanish back so we've got a bit of mutual respect going already. I have to say, though, his English is better than my Spanish will ever be. We communicate through Spanglish, I call it!

He's a real old-school traditionalist with behaviour generally; there's no doubt where you stand from a discipline point of view. He's a proper shouter when he's not happy but that's fine, I've worked with guys like that before and you can see they have passion for what they're doing.

He's a former goalkeeper so I think his nature is to be quite defensive, certainly if training's anything to go by. Everything is built from the back and very patiently, too. So I find myself making an early run, as if I was in England, but the ball doesn't come anywhere near the forward line for another minute. It's opened my eyes to another world completely - just different, not making English football right or wrong, just massively different.

I think that's where the new English owners are coming from. They want to see what they can do to make the club more appealing to the ex-pats out here. There's 30 or 40,000 English living here, yet the club only gets a few thousand locals coming to watch.

I think the ambitions for this year are to try and change the mindset among some of the folk out here and make ourselves more attractive to a wider audience.

I've got to say it's great to be in on this new beginning at the start, rather than half-way through. We don't kick off until the end of the month but things are starting to take shape now.

As for a quick selection for the weekend, I'm tipping one of my former clubs, Wycombe Wanderers in League Two. They're away to Chester who've let in 11 goals in two matches. So I reckon you should back them to win at odds of [2.28].