When you have been a manager, why would you become an assistant? When you were once the man making the decisions and the tough calls, why would you take instructions from somebody else? Having been in charge of Motherwell then later Coventry City, Eric Black accepted an offer last summer to become first-team coach at Birmingham City. He once stood with the few at the front, so why take a step back into the crowd? The television is mounted on the wall in the corner of the room, a square window on a small world. As the players drift in and out of the canteen at Birmingham’s training ground they watch the screen, rapt with attention. It is last Tuesday lunchtime and Salif Diao walks past the door while the Sky Sports ticker tape informs us that Birmingham and Aston Villa are both vying to take the Liverpool midfielder on loan. The presenter breathlessly announces that Blackburn are closing in on the signing of Robbie Savage, once the heartbeat of the Birmingham side, now already becoming a memory. Dwight Yorke watches in bemusement, a half-smile on his lips, as a story appears saying that Martin O’Neill, the Celtic manager, is not interested in signing him.
When Black strolls in, he seems small, almost waif-like next to the tall, broad modern-day footballers who surround him. There is Mario Melchiot, who has played for Ajax, Chelsea and Holland; there is Emile Heskey, the England international who joined from Liverpool in a £6.25m transfer last summer; there is Matthew Upson, tutored by Arsene Wenger at Highbury before moving to St Andrews. They greet him warmly, one of the boys. One of them.
PEOPLE in football speak of his talents as a coach. He knows the game, he knows players, he has firm thoughts and knows how to communicate them. When Gary McAllister was appointed player/manager of Coventry three years ago and began looking for an assistant, he remembered being impressed by Black’s coaching of the Scotland under-21 team. They were not friends, he was not doing a mate a favour, he just wanted a good man in the dugout and on the training field. When Steve Bruce began a similar search last summer, he too was impressed by Black’s reputation. “Of all the potential candidates, Eric was outstanding,” he said at the time.
Black, out of work after being sacked by Coventry last May, had been linked with the manager’s job at Hibernian before Tony Mowbray took over and at Aberdeen before Jimmy Calderwood was appointed. There had also been offers from lower-division clubs in England. Instead, he accepted Bruce’s invite. You wonder why he made this choice. During his two spells as a manager, both of which lasted less than six months, he was in charge for just 57 games, yet you wonder if he does not miss the intensity of management, the edge that is lacking behind the scenes.
“You always have that wee thought that you’d like to do it, but I’m not as sought-after that I can choose what I do,” he says. “You have to go along with it and I’m very happy here. It’s enhanced my cv because I’ve never worked in the Premiership before. I’m not saying it’s the best league in the world, but it certainly has the biggest profile.”
He is sitting in the office he shares with Keith Bertschin, the reserve team coach, and beside him a window stares out at the empty training pitch. It is here that Black ponders his coaching routines and which players need what specific drills. The talk is also of tactics and formations, opponents and signing targets. He is in the midst of the decision-making process, but not at its forefront. The buck, now, passes him by and stops further along the corridor, where Bruce can be found.
A figure suddenly appears at the door, half leaning into the room. “I’m working, I’m working,” shouts Clinton Morrison, the striker, a baseball cap sitting slightly askew on top of his head. “Blackie’s come in and made a big difference to the strikers.” Then he disappears and Black sits back in his chair, smiling bashfully.
He lives just 25 minutes away from the training ground, in Leamington, and his family enjoy the area. Jonathan, his son, is a keen rugby player — “he’s 15 stone of front row” — while his daughter, Danielle, represents the Midlands at hockey. So settled are they, that Black “wouldn’t move them again. If I move job, I’d have to commute”.
Even if that might mean never again being a manager? “If it happens, it happens,” he adds. “I like getting out on the field with the players, working with them and hopefully improving them. There are added pressures as a manager, but it’s an added high as well. When you’re the manager, you’re the one who takes it on the chin.”
SOMETIMES, honesty and decency are no shields against unpleasantness. At Motherwell, Black left when the club fell into administration and nine players were made redundant while a further 10 were released early from their contracts. At Coventry, he was sacked and replaced by Peter Reid only weeks after a series of positive results saw him described as a “messiah” by Mike McGinnity, the chairman. “Last night I told my wife I loved her, but it doesn’t necessarily hold true this morning,” McGinnity said by way of an explanation. What you want sometimes comes with a price, like reaching out to touch a rose and being cut by its thorns. For Black, these were times to come through, times in which it was important to stay true to his values. He could not remain at Fir Park because he felt he had made promises to the players that turned out to be, through no fault of his own, worthless.
“We’d made cuts, the budget was going down every month. I thought at the end of the season we would get a lot off the wage bill,” Black says quietly. “Ach, it was John Boyle’s money, he obviously felt at the time that was it. Maybe it has proved to be right, but you can’t say because if we had hung out I think it would have turned.”
Later, after it was suggested he had helped to nominate which people to sack, he arranged a lunch to clear the air with the players made redundant and assure them that was not the case. Only two, Andy Dow and Kevin Twaddle, who Black had transfer-listed before administration, did not turn up. Black was not out of the game for long, though, with McAllister offering him the assistant’s job at Coventry only weeks later. Having never played or worked in England, he saw the move as an opportunity to widen both his experience and his profile. Yet the situation he left behind could not be completely forgotten.
In the wake of ITV Digital’s collapse, McAllister and Black understood that money would be tight at Coventry, but what they did not know was that the club was almost choking. Three times, Coventry came within hours of administration, despite selling the likes of Magnus Hedman to Celtic and David Thompson to Blackburn. By the time McAllister resigned to nurse his ill wife, Denise, in December 2003, the club was on a safer footing and Black’s first game in charge was a 6-1 win over Walsall. His last was a 5-2 victory over Gillingham, his dismissal coming despite an impressive haul of 40 points in just five months. That Reid himself lasted only seven months before being sacked three weeks ago merely emphasises the absurdity that can grip a football club.
“Obviously I left on a bitter note and I was very disappointed at the time because I didn’t believe it was the right way forward for the club,” Black says diplomatically. “I have great memories from my time there, though. It was difficult, because of the financial situation. We were told within three weeks of being there that we had to raise 10 million quid, and we were left with 22, 23 players, it was like a revolving door. I’d probably be better working for Ernst & Young (the accountants).”
He grins, which creases his youthful features. At 40, age is only just starting to catch up with Black, in the brushes of grey in his hair and the laughter lines around his face. He has lived a life, but it has not worn him down.
IT WAS a back injury that ended Black’s career at the age of 28, an untimely interruption for a forward of technique and finesse. He was playing for Metz at the time, under Joel Muller, and remained there as a scout while sitting his coaching exams under Aime Jacquet and Gerard Houllier. So his second career is now as long as his playing one was, a quirk that Black takes a positive from. “I probably came into it too early, but therefore I’ve got more experience,” he says. “Normally, by the time you’ve got this experience, you’re 50-odd, so I’ve been fortunate in that regard.”
Finding a source of light in the darkness is an integral part of Black’s nature. His back still troubles him, but he deals with it and moves on. “I’m constantly on painkillers,” he grimaces. “I’ve had various operations and I go to the States every year for injections, which keep me going. And New York’s not the worst place to go.”
Craig Brown brought Black into the international set-up with the Scotland under-21s, before a youth coach role took him to Celtic Park. Once there, he stepped up to become assistant to John Barnes, a spell that ended following Celtic’s Scottish Cup defeat to Inverness Caledonian Thistle, during which Black and Mark Viduka argued at half-time and the Australian striker refused to play the second half. Black then started up a player recruitment agency. It has been a varied career but given the chance, would he do any of it differently? “Aye, I wish that when I left Celtic I’d gone straight to Real Madrid,” he chuckles. “I’m not one to look back and say, ‘Aw, I should have taken this direction’, and I’m not one who says, ‘This year I need to work here and then I need to get a manager’s job next year’. I like to commit myself 100% to what’s happening and see where it takes me.”
So what is happening at Birmingham? Black is essentially in charge of training, although Bruce provides direction. Before yesterday, Birmingham sat 14th in the Premiership, a team still recovering from a start that saw them win just once in their opening 11 league games. For Black, adjusting to his new surroundings and job also required him to query his methods.
“Yeah, I questioned, ‘Am I doing it right?’ So I spoke to a couple of the players individually who I knew I’d get the right feedback from. But it wasn’t the case, thankfully. I don’t think you feel it the same as the manager feels it, because it’s Steve’s team and it’ll be Steve who gets any negative press. There’s undoubtedly a bigger pressure being the manager, but it still hurts you. You feel responsible. And you are, you are responsible.”
He is no longer the main man at a football club, but Black is still working at what he knows best, coaching footballers, making a team better. Doing what he does. Being who he is.