To suggest that Moore’s new job proves the system is now fair for black coaches is utter fallacy
WHEN West Bromwich Albion sacked Alan Pardew at the beginning of last month after a run of eight successive Premier League defeats, the club were 10 points adrift of safety and bottom of the table. There were six games left. Three of them were against Liverpool, Manchester United and Spurs. They were about as lost as a lost cause can get.
They had been through three of the old guard of the English managerial game already. In one season. Tony Pulis, Gary Megson and Pardew had come and gone and now West Brom were in a parlous and hopeless position. They were relegated in all but name. At that point, t hey appointed Darren Moore, who had been promoted to first-team coach in December 2017, as caretaker manager.
Then something amazing happened. Moore galvanised the place. He transformed it. He turned a group of players who seemed to be more interested in joy-riding in Barcelona tax is than winning matches into a team who suddenly got their pride back.
They won at Old Trafford. They drew with Liverpool. They beat Spurs. There was a point when it looked as if Moore might actually perform a miracle and pull off the greatest escape of all time. Southampton beating Swansea in the final week of the season put paid to that, but not before Moore had been made Manager of the Month for April. In six games, he had won more points than Pardew had won in 18.
It was thought initially that West Brom’s owners had reservations about appointing Moore as manager on a permanent basis. But in the end, a club that had made him their youth coach and promoted him to first-team coach under Pardew, stood by him. On Friday, they gave him the job. It gave the club hope of a brighter future.
West Brom deserve credit for their steady promotion of Moore. I’m sorry if that sounds a bit odd. I know that a man’s work should speak for itself and he should be promoted or overlooked solely on his merits and the evidence of his performance. Sadly, those rules do not apply in English football when it comes to the appointment of black managers. Moore’s appointment was a step forward for all aspiring black coaches in this country but if we really want to use it as a catalyst for progress then it must lead to an acceptance that there is a reservoir of talented black coaches out there who are not even getting close to being allowed to show what they could do. Say that, of course, and it elicits a stream of bile and abuse from trolls and bigots who scream that there is no proof of discrimination. Talk about the Rooney Rule, which requires NFL clubs to interview one BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) candidate for coaching vacancies and is gaining some traction here and the bigots scream about tokenism and quotas.
Well, the proof they want exists partly in the numbers. The appointment of Moore at West Brom means there are now six black managers in English football. The others are Chris Hughton at Brighton and Hove Albion, Chris Powell at Southend United, Nuno Espirito Santo at Wolves, Jos Luhukay at Sheffield Wednesday and Dino Maamria at Stevenage.
That number has stayed fairly constant for the past couple of decades. It means that even though a recent survey showed that more than 30 per cent of players in this country are from a BA ME background, when you translate that to how many are trusted to manage a club, the figure is only 6.5 per cent. It also means a generation of black managers have been frozen out of the game here.
More proof of discrimination? Well, how about anecdotal evidence from qualified black coaches who are routinely ignored by clubs when they apply for a job. Sure, there are qualified white coaches who are ignored, too. I get that. But the evidence is that black coaches are ignored more often and more relentlessly.
‘ When you apply for jobs in football management you realise how black you are ,’ former Sheffield United striker Brian Deane, who had to go to Norway to get managerial experience, said recently. ‘One problem is that you don’t have mentors or role models from your culture and you don’t have the same networks of contacts.’
For every Deane, there are tens and tens of other aspiring black managers with similar stories. They have worked and paid for their coaching badges only to be ignored by all-white boardrooms. Maybe there is no outright racism in those personnel decisions but it is hard to think there is not at least an unhealthy dollop of unconscious bias. I know that many aspiring black managers who have worked long and hard to try to get an opening at a league club were particularly dismayed when it was announced earlier this season that Joey Barton would be taking over next season a s manag e r of Fleetwood Town.
Barton had a reputation as a troublemaker as a player and was jailed for assault and affray a decade ago. He is currently serving a ban for breaking FA betting rules. Even more pertinent for a lot of black coaches was the fact that Barton has no coaching experience at all and yet, despite all these things, he walked straight into a sought-after job in League One.
Still there are some who deny that there is a problem. Where, they say, is this army of black coaches you talk about who are so desperate for jobs? It is as if they believe they are phantoms invented by the politically correct. That’s just what they want to believe. The reality is very different.
The PFA has a ‘ready list’ of black coaches who have taken or are taking their coaching badges and are ready to be considered for jobs in English management. There are more than 100 names on the list. There were 15 Pro Licence holders and a further 27 who have passed their Uefa A Licence. Then there is a phalanx of B Licence holders, too. So the numbers are there and they are growing, although there is an increasing amount of disillusionment at the lack of opportunities out t here f or bl ack coaches. Another recent survey showed that BAME coaches held just 22 of 482 leading roles in the English game.
I hope t hat Darren Moore’s success and West Brom’s faith in him provides encouragement for those who were beginning to give up hope but, sadly, the idea that his appointment proves the system is fair to black coaches is a fallacy.