YOU’VE heard the one about the Englishman in New York? Well, Stuart Holden has been seeking advice from his fellow ex-pat Americans about how to survive on the other side of the pond.

Since deciding to trade in Major League Soccer for a second crack at Premier League football, Holden hasn’t exactly enjoyed the best run of luck.

Heavy snowfall restricted his first week at Wanderers to a few indoor training sessions, while a nagging thigh injury has kept him out of match action for the last fortnight.

But that has allowed him to check the lie of the land with compatriots Tim Howard and Landon Donovan, who have been important guides since the midfielder left Houston Dynamo just before Christmas to go in search of a contract across the Atlantic.

“They’re good friends of mine, and I have to say they were pivotal in my decision-making process in coming over here,” he said.

“They’ve pointed out a few things, showed me the ropes a bit. Now I’m ready to go.

“I spoke to Tim, especially, a number of times when I was over in the States and told him what I was thinking, and he was happy to help me out.

“Obviously we play together at international level, but it will be great to play against him in the Premier League, and, hopefully, knocking one past him.”

However frustrating his first two weeks at Wanderers has been, it pales by comparison to the bad fortune he had during his first spell in English football with Sunderland just over five years ago. An unprovoked attack outside a nightclub in Newcastle saw the Aberdeen-born youngster, then just 18, hospitalised with a badly broken cheekbone, before another bad injury forced Mick McCarthy to release him.

Unsurprisingly, Holden is quite guarded about that period of his life, but claims it has made him more determined to succeed after being given the opportunity to impress by Owen Coyle.

“It was an unfortunate incident,” he said. “It set me back a little bit and put me out for a couple of months.

“I finally got back from that and then did my ankle, so I was out until the end of the season. I guess it was never meant to be.

“It was always in the back of my mind that I wanted to come back and play over here.”

University educated, Holden doesn’t strike you as a typical footballer.

He is unlikely to be “over the moon” or “sick as a parrot” no matter how he does in the four months before this summer’s World Cup, by which time Coyle will have made up his mind about taking him on a longer deal.

And he accepts his decision to join Wanderers, after being somewhat of a big fish in a little pond in the MLS, represents somewhat of a gamble, being that it comes with no guarantee of first team football.

“I have always been confident of my own ability but I know there’s a risk element,” he said.

“I could have taken the easy route, spent six months playing every game at Houston and if I’d been playing the way I had, then I would have probably been going to the World Cup.

“But in terms of my career, I didn’t want to make a decision based solely on one World Cup.

“It’s a decision that affects the next few years of my life. It’s the next step and I’ll never look back and have any regrets.”

After leaving Scotland aged 10, Holden grew up in Houston, Texas, where he returned after leaving Sunderland.

The Dynamo franchise is only a decade old, and has only existed in its current guise since 2006, thanks in part to club owner and boxing legend Oscar de la Hoya. But Holden is fiercely protective of the MLS, and insists the quality of football in a land that has historically struggled to embrace the sport at professional level — at least in the men’s form — is improving.

“People under-estimate the league,” he said. “The standard is getting better, the fans are getting better.

“The whole thing is really getting going and I honestly think that one day it will be right up there with some of the best leagues in the world.

“The Premier League is widely considered to be the ultimate, and that ferocity and intensity that you see every day in training and then on a Saturday is exactly what I wanted to be a part of.

“But in the States, it’s the most played sport at youth level. The trick is to keep the kids interested when they have gone through the system.

“It helps by having academies, and through people like Beckham, having more of a buzz right throughout the sport.

“There will be two more teams in the MLS next year and I can only see that growing and growing in the future.”