Website exclusive: More from Sven-Goran Eriksson's exclusive interview with The Independent

You read it here. The best player at Sven Goran Eriksson’s disposal over the years was a Brazilian midfielder. Elano, perhaps? The man who, when Eriksson was asked why he was achieving early this season at City what he hadn’t for England, prompted the response: “Because I never had a player like Elano.” No. The player Eriksson has most cherished down the years is Roberto Falcao. “You won’t remember him,” he says.

But Welshmen of a certain age definitely do. Falcao signed for Roma from the Brazilian club Internacional for £950,000 in 1980 and was considered by many the best player at the 1983 World Cup before playing at Wrexham for Eriksson’s Roma against the Welsh Cup holders in the Cup Winners’ Cup in 1984. Wrexham had been second bottom of the Football League the previous year but The Times reported that their 1-0 home defeat, making it 3-0 on aggregate, might have been different “had it not been for the magnificence of Falcao, the Brazilian, who covered an amazing amount of ground for someone unfit.”

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Despite the players and teams at his disposal over the years, Eriksson says there would be things he would do differently, if he had his first season at Manchester City over again. He worked the players too hard mid-way through the season, he believes, and that contributed to their fading fortunes in the New Year, compounded by the FA Cup exit at Sheffield United.

“Of course you learn something,” he says. “I think maybe we trained too much around Christmas. Mentally, I think players got very, very tired after the New Year and a bit in January so I want to change that a little next season, for sure. Maybe give them one or two days break now and then, especially for the new players who have not played in the Premier League before that was difficult. Not so much physically as mentally.”

Having arrived too late to create the squad he wanted to – his spending last summer pales by comparison with his Lazio days when he told owner Sergio Cragnotti: “Buy me (Juan Sebastian) Veron and I will deliver you the Scudetto” and was given his wish, at a cost of £19m – Eriksson certainly anticipated the January transfer window being easier to operate within than it proved. "When the owner came and took over and I could start work we were very late to buy players and what I have learnt is that buying players in January is very difficult, very difficult. But now we have more time for next summer and we are much, much better prepared than we were last summer."

His closest friend in the management fraternity is Arsene Wenger, Eriksson reveals, and contrary to the view of many the Swede does not believe Wenger should invest heavily having failed to secure a trophy for a third successive season. “I don’t think (he should) because I think the difference between Liverpool and Arsenal (in the Champions League quarter final) was nothing. You could say two penalties going the right way or the wrong way. They have a young team and if they don’t do anything, buy anyone, sell anyone, they will be better next season. Players like Fabregas, Walcott, Adebayor will be better and better. Whatever you say about Arsenal and Wenger he has been very good in buying young talent.”

City fans might not want notice of Eriksson’s view on which opposition he has found toughest this season. “The team we’ve beaten twice,” he says. Eriksson is also in the school of thought which has Cristiano Ronaldo down as the world’s best player. “The best today is Ronaldo but I’m not sure Ferguson will sell him,” he says.

His decision to come to City was, he says, a product of his excitement about Thaksin Shinawatra’s City “project.” He says, when it is put to him that he had the pick of bigger clubs: “I don’t know if I could have wanted a bigger club. I wanted to manage in the Premier League because it’s the biggest league in the world. I like England, the atmosphere around football in the English game is fantastic.”

The interest in his private life here is something which marks Britain out from other countries where he has worked, he says. “I know the press in this country is very powerful and I know it’s always been like that and perhaps will always will be like that. The press everywhere is powerful but (in Britain) too much obsessed with the private life of people I would say. I was not used to that. Before I came to this country I had heard about it but I was surprised. It’s not easy but if you want to live in this country you have to take it.”

So he would take the England job again if he has his time over? “If I knew what I know now I would say ‘yes.’ It’s probably the biggest job that comes along in the world of football.”

Eriksson reveals that he does get occasional calls for advise from his son, Johan, who is coaching the Durban-based Thanda Royal Zulu club in South Africa, a club which as bought by a Swedish consortium at the end of last season, relocated and renamed. “I don’t advise him if he doesn’t ask for advice but sometimes of course he phones me,” Eriksson says. “It’s a first division team – it’s a top team but not top of the league, more the other way, so of course sometimes he phones and asks about advise.”

Eriksson jnr is ahead of his father in the motivational strategies which have served him so far, his father believes. “I suppose he is better than me in that because he has been studying sports psychology in the United states for five years. That (skill) he has developed very well but of course he hasn’t much experience as a coach. When we had a break here I went down to see them. They lost! But they beat Orlando Pirates in the last game of the league which is one of the biggest clubs down there.”

So might Europe ultimately appeal to Johan? “I don’t know. It’s very difficult to say. It’s his first year as a football coach and he likes it. It’s extremely good experience for him. I don’t think he has any plans to move. They want to coach that team and build a football academy. It’s a very big project." Father and son, it seems, are in the same boat.