Gus Poyet will spend his 53rd birthday quietly with a family walk around Battersea Park on Sunday. At some point, there will be a video call to Mum seven thousand miles away in Uruguay.
It is two years since Poyet's last managerial post and after spells in Greece, China, Spain and France, he is back in his adopted city where he played successfully for Chelsea and Tottenham and raised two sons.
'I was 29 when I first came to England from Real Zaragoza, It turned out to be a life-changing decision, and the right one,' he recounts.