Hamstrings "made of candyfloss" denied Martin Paterson the career he wanted as a player.
Published March 27, 2026 • Source: bbc.com
By Andrew Aloia, BBC Sport, East Midlands  and  Charlie Slater, BBC East Midlands Today
Hamstrings "made of candyfloss" denied Martin Paterson the career he wanted as a player.
Now, as Notts County head coach, the 38-year-old is determined to ensure his players do not squander their opportunities in football.
That's why, with the Magpies fourth in League Two with seven games left, the former Stoke City, Scunthorpe and Huddersfield striker, who played in the Premier League with Burnley, wants them to do all they can to seize their chance of promotion.
The manager Paterson has become, and the demands he puts on those under him, is fundamentally linked to the player he could never be.
He was only 30 when he retired, seeing out his playing days overseas with stints in the United States and India, when less than a decade earlier he was scoring in England's top flight.
"I was robbed in my career, physically," Paterson told BBC East Midlands Today.
"I never got the chance to show how good I was. I reached the Premier League at 22, I was a £1m player at 20. But then I had a massive knee injury, and my hamstrings were made of candyfloss.
"So I carry that into my coaching and, whether my players like me or not, I want them to get every chance to sit in their deck chair when they're older and go, 'I gave it my best shot and I reached the level that I should have reached'.
"I want my players to understand that I want to make them better. I never really got the chance to know how good I could have been, and I don't want that for them."
Paterson moved abroad in the last years of his career to try to eke all he could out of his playing career after repeated injury setbacks.
The Tampa Bay Rowdies, a club he moved to the US to join in 2017 after playing at Orlando City earlier in his career, is where he first started coaching after he retired as a player with Mohun Bagan in India.
By 2022 he was working in Major League Soccer as assistant coach to Phil Neville at Inter Miami, the club co-owned by former England captain David Beckham.
Within six months he relocated his coaching career to England, working as number two at Barnsley under Michael Duff - a manager he would go on to work with at Swansea City and Huddersfield Town.
It was between those spells with the Swans and Terriers that Paterson stepped up as a manager with a short stint as Burton boss.
'I know the sacrifices'
Working with eight clubs in six years on opposite sides of the Atlantic has demanded a lot of Paterson and his young family.
"My family, my wife and beautiful kids, sacrifice more than people know," he said.
"Some managers are different and they can switch off, I don't.
"I think my wife thinks she's part of the staff, so she's got opinions as well of who should play. And sometimes when I pick a team and go home, she gives me a look and I'm like 'wow'.
"But this is the life, I wouldn't want it any other way. This is what I do and I've sacrificed so much for it.
"I know the sacrifices I have made with my family and all I expect is just my staff and everyone working at the football club gives everything they have got to the club and badge."
Paterson does not flinch when he says promotion from League Two is the only aim this season.
He got the job last summer when Stuart Maynard was sacked for failing to get the Magpies over the line, losing to AFC Wimbledon in the play-off semi-finals after finishing sixth.
"We have to fight for every point in the next seven games and I have got confidence in my group, in myself and this football club that we can achieve something special," added Paterson.
"It's not promised, it's going to take hard work, but sometimes you have to come out and say it and be positive, rather than hide."