Living on the Volcano by Michael Calvin

Author:Michael Calvin
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781473506787
Publisher: Random House

13

The Fallacy of Failure

DECEMBER 29 WAS nominally a day off after a torrid, joyless Christmas. Alan Irvine sat alone in his rented flat, 102 miles from the family home in Southport, watching videos of West Ham’s last three matches. He had crafted his coaching session for the following morning’s training, and was applying the final touches to his game plan for the visit to Upton Park on New Year’s Day.

At 11 p.m. he took a call on his mobile. The body clocks of the idiotic chorus line who had taunted him at Stoke the previous day with the chant of ‘You’re getting sacked in the morning’ were inaccurate. Irvine was informed he had been relieved of his duties as West Bromwich Albion manager, and that he would be on gardening leave until the expiry of his one-year rolling contract.

The news was released the next morning. The club’s official Twitter feed recorded ‘a sombre day for staff at The Hawthorns, because we have said farewell to a man of great class and dignity’. Terry Burton, Albion’s technical director, spoke of the ‘dedication and diligence’ of ‘one of the foremost coaches in the UK’. Such was his tone he could almost have adapted Harold Macmillan’s immortal response to the definitive difficulties of politics (‘events, dear boy, events’). The subtext of Burton’s reflection on ‘unpleasant decisions’ dictated by the ‘imperative’ of securing a sixth season in the Premier League was simple: results, dear boy, results.

Albion had won only four of Irvine’s 19 League games in charge. They were one point and two places above the relegation zone. They were about to enter a theoretically more favourable run of fixtures but context, in the modern world, veers dangerously close to an excuse. Move along, people, nothing to see here.

Irvine’s appointment had not been popular, but how many of the 83 per cent who condemned him in a poll of 7,000 readers of the Express & Star, Albion’s local newspaper, really knew him beyond vague generalities and a thumbnail sketch of his CV? The process of airbrushing a manager out of history is almost designed to promote such ignorance.

Albion have a reputation as an honourable club. Unlike some, they fulfil their contractual obligations to discarded staff. Yet the mechanics of change are dehumanising; Irvine did not have an opportunity to say farewell to his players, and retrieved his belongings from the training ground the following evening, when the media pack had dispersed.

His is a familiar story of recurrent rejection and renewal, which underlines the breadth of his experience and the depth of his character. Barely 5ft tall at 15, he was deemed too small as a schoolboy winger. This led to unsuccessful trials at Leeds United, Manchester City, Rangers and Dundee United. He was even released, with goalkeeper Jim Leighton, from his boys’ club team, Glasgow United.

He began training with Queen’s Park, Glasgow’s amateur club, while working as an insurance broker and studying for accountancy qualifications. He needed respite, the opportunity to grow intellectually and

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