Black and white makes sense

DEMAND for Motherwell scarves at the club shop has increased since it was noticed that their claret-and-amber stripes bore an uncanny resemblance to those worn by Harry Potter. The product is said to be cheaper and better than the film’s official merchandise. Eric Black, the club’s fresh-faced manager, likewise intends to be resourceful, cute and a little cunning in his attempts to compete with the stars.

Motherwell have learned that a club of their size can only pretend to be rich and famous. After lavishing unwise amounts of money on the likes of Andy Goram and John Spencer in a commercial experiment that included the admission of fans for next to nothing, they have gone to the other extreme, and sought to conjure success on a shoestring. Black, who replaced Billy Davies in October, is the wizard expected to perform minor miracles.

On the face of it, his appointment was a triumph for commonsense at a time when chairmen are realising the folly of over-ambition. Like Craig Levein at Hearts, he is a local boy returned to his roots. Born in Bellshill and brought up in East Kilbride, where he played schools football alongside Ally McCoist, he talks of exploiting a heartland of the game that has been neglected for too long. "This is a good traditional club with a lot of heart; a lot of loyal, passionate people. We have to make use of that. We might not get all the local players coming through, but we have to catch a significant percentage of them. It’s not enough merely to say: here’s a player who came through the system. There has to be a conscious effort to develop him. With an income that is roughly 11th out of 12 SPL clubs, this is the best way to spend our money."

Black, though, is better travelled than most novice managers at the age of 38, and has much more to offer than a one-dimensional, back-to-basics approach. "Even when I was a young player, I never thought that everything started and finished in Scotland," he adds. His boyhood hero was Johan Cruyff, his mother-in-law is German, and his two children were born in France, where he spent the last five years of his playing career.

The experience has had such a lasting effect that he intends to relocate to the continent after his 14-year-old son, whom he watches playing rugby on Saturday mornings, and his 11-year-old daughter have been educated in Scotland. "I prefer the lifestyle in France. I love the food, the wine and, although I’m enjoying myself at the moment, in the cold light of day I would rather live abroad where the mentality is more relaxed."

After leaving Aberdeen in 1986, Black spent five years with Metz, working under three coaches: Marcel Husson, Belgian Henri Depireux and the esteemed Joel Muller, now manager of league-leading Lens. "It certainly broadened my horizons both as an individual and in football terms," says the trilingual Black, who telephones his French contacts every day and keeps in touch with former coaches. "Their tactics were more advanced than ours, and they knew more about the preparation of players and the development of coaching than we did. I benefited from that."

Just as his father’s professional career with Airdrie and Hearts was prematurely ended by cartilage trouble, Black retired at 28 with a back injury. "It forced me to think at an early age about what I wanted to do," he reflects. "Most players don’t do that until they’re 33." He set about utilising the knowledge he had gained in France, most notably when he acquired his professional coaching licence under the guidance of Gerard Houllier, the French Federation’s technical director at the time, and Aime Jacquet.

He learned about the importance of psychology to football management, an aspect of the profession that will be central to his plans at Fir Park. "That was a real eye-opener. It made me pose questions about things I’d never even thought about. What motivates players? What demotivates players? You might think these are strange questions, but if you sat down and thought about them, you would come up with a few interesting answers. When you do that, as I do, players quickly fall into categories. You have to know footballers to get the best out of them."

Only recently, Black read Antraineur: Competence et Passion, a book about the subject written by Houllier and psychologist Jacques Crevoisier, now assisting the Liverpool manager at Anfield. "I find it all fascinating," says Black. "It looks at all the problems of management from a psychological point of view. It is an area that is expanding in football. We’ve been through the fitness one, the preparation one, and everybody understands now about diet, nutrition, supplements and rehydration. But psychology is the big unknown. Why do players react in different ways when they are not picked? Whether it can help or not I don’t know, but it has to be explored."

A far cry from the traditional methods of motivation favoured by Alex Ferguson during Black’s six years at Pittodrie. While he admires the Manchester United manager’s burning passion, he is not one of the so-called protgs who have a hotline to Old Trafford. "I didn’t leave Aberdeen on the best of terms, but I’m sure he doesn’t lie awake at night thinking about it, and neither do I. He sent me a Christmas card."

Black is renowned for a more studious approach to the game. Since taking charge of Motherwell, he and assistant Terry Butcher have had to relinquish their commitments to Inside Soccer, a recruitment agency who ask managers what kind of footballer they require, then make a recommendation after consulting a database of international players. The same contacts, and indeed methods, are now used in the manager’s office at Fir Park. "I try to grade players in each of a number of categories and, if they reach a certain level, they have a chance."

So far the only one to have passed the test and won himself a permanent deal is Eric Deloumeaux, a 100,000 signing from Le Havre, who has impressed since joining the club six weeks ago. An opportunity for Motherwell to continue the gradual improvement in results will arrive with consecutive home matches, against St Johnstone on Boxing Day and Dundee on Saturday. It is a steady, unspectacular, start to Black’s first spell in charge of a team.

Despite a decade watching football from the touchlines, much of which was spent rising through the coaching ranks of the SFA, his assistant’s role at Celtic, first under Jo Venglos and then John Barnes, was the nearest he had come to management at club level. Black has been accused of questioning Mark Viduka’s commitment on that fateful night when they lost to Inverness Caledonian Thistle. Appointed by former general manager Jock Brown, he does not deny reports that he was sometimes an unpopular presence in the dressing-room. "There were elements of that, but what one or two individuals thought was irrelevant to me. Maybe I was labelled because I was associated with the individual who brought me to the club."

Far from admitting that man-management may turn out to be one of his weaknesses, he believes that he learned much about psychology from Venglos, who is scouting on an occasional basis for Motherwell, and may even benefit from the fiasco that he witnessed under Barnes and Kenny Dalglish. "You learn more in adversity about people, management and how a dressing-room works than you do when everything in the garden is rosy. I was given a real insight into it at Celtic. I would have preferred to have won the treble, but in some ways I was fortunate to learn a lot from the experience."

Now Butcher, an extrovert and defender with 77 caps for England, is assistant, while Black, a cool-headed striker with a modest playing career by comparison, calls the shots. The plan is that they will complement each other. The manager is already noticing that the responsibility of taking decisions is far more stressful than the frustrations of being a sidekick. "It’s fine to say we should do it this way or that way when you’re an assistant. You just throw in your opinion, and go home. It doesn’t matter if you made the wrong decision. When you’re the manager, you’re to blame if it’s the wrong one. Suddenly you’re thinking about things you never had to worry about before. What should we do after a match? Do I give them a day off? How should I deal with the ones who are not playing? There’s not a waking moment when you’re not thinking about how to make things better."

Black is a curious hybrid. A Scot who made a name for himself abroad, a modernist who applauds the traditions of Largs and the managers it has produced. "You are your experiences," he says. It’s enough to make the Fir Park punters wonder whether the philosopher’s stoned.