Why Darren Moore is the perfect man for the West Brom job I have known Darren Moore, West Brom’s caretaker manager, for a long time – since we both played for Barnsley […]

I have known Darren Moore, West Brom’s caretaker manager, for a long time – since we both played for Barnsley a decade or so ago. His remarkable success in charge of the Baggies – eight points in four games with a side that almost everyone had already consigned to relegation – may have surprised many people but it certainly didn’t surprise me. And it won’t have surprised many others who were once his team-mates.

Likability is no guarantee of success, but there are few people in English football that carry as much goodwill towards them as Mooro. Speaking not just to others who have played alongside him, but even those with no direct connection at all, you’ll be hard pushed to find anyone who carries more goodwill than Darren.

It’s a rare thing in such a wildly competitive environment that can create rivalry and resentment even among team-mates as well as opponents.

And even back then as a player, he was a natural authority to go with his calm and laid-back manner.

Run-in with Roy Keane

When we were at Barnsley, Mooro talked and everyone listened. No shouting matches, but whatever was said, you were left convinced by his words. On the few occasions his anger was raised, it was more than enough for his targets, including a particularly agitated Roy Keane outside the dressing rooms at Oakwell when the Irishman was manager of Ipswich.

Keane had taken exception to Mooro appealing for, and being awarded, a free-kick for a foul on him that had stopped a dangerous Ipswich attack. As we passed the away dressing room, Keane was standing outside greeting his players when he piped up with “You do a lot of crying for a big man, don’t you?”.

Mooro turned and gave him what we called “the brow”, an intimidating look of displeasure he directed towards anyone unfortunate enough to rouse it. He’d lower his head and look up at you with his forehead creased. In this instance it resulted in him launching himself at Keane and all hell breaking out in the corridor.

Read more Roy Keane is angry again but nobody really knows why

However, to fully understand why Mooro has done so well in the past few weeks, we have to look back at what has gone before.

West Brom began the season under Tony Pulis, whose management style, on and off the pitch, was direct and effective, but in both cases its shelf life was never going to be a long one. Particularly when the justification of results began to wane.

Once West Brom’s league position dropped, the voices of discontent grew. None more so than in the dressing room. The abrasive motivational tactics lost their effect and players tuned out to the constant white noise of a barking dictator.

For any philosophy to be successful, particularly the regimented style of Pulis, strict directions have to be carried out to their fullest, with a unit working as one. Once players go off-script, the decline is steep.

Pardew loses the dressing room

Change was needed, but not what came next. Alan Pardew was the polar opposite of Pulis in every way. The players needed someone like Tony Pulis, just not Tony Pulis. They had bought into an ethos that clearly worked and they had the squad to implement it. They simply needed to be put on the right track. The problem with Pardew was that he pulled up the track and didn’t replace it.

Managers have a short space of time in which to convince the players he is the right man to lead them to the land of mid-table security, and not recognising your club’s record £16million signing, Oliver Burke, and asking who he was didn’t make for a great start. Eyes started rolling among the squad before the first ball had been kicked under the new regime.

Players who were desperately short on confidence weren’t allowed to build on good performances, given praise with one hand, only for it to be taken away with the other. With one struggling player in particular being told, “Well done today. Although you should play well against him [his opponent]. He’s s**t.”

Respect was never gained to be lost, the usual dance of demise, and incidents like the Barcelona debacle (in which four players including Jonny Evans and Gareth Barry were punished by the club after a taxi was stolen during a club break in the Spanish city) were just a result of that.

With authority questioned to such an extent, a mainstay of the dressing room even booked a mid-season break to Dubai without the knowledge or the consent of the management. Breaking point had been reached.

Willing lieutenant

Under Pardew, Moore had been drafted into the first-team coaching set-up from West Brom’s much-heralded academy but just as a coach, his influence on pitch matters tempered by the few responsibilities his new role covered.

Not that Mooro will have seen it as beneath him. Throughout his career he has been as able and willing a lieutenant as he was a captain, and while his mantra of using “we” rather than “I” in his post-match interviews may seem too deliberate, it is an honest reflection of the man.

Speaking to him immediately after the 1-0 win over Newcastle last weekend, even away from the dictaphones laid out behind him, any congratulations and pats on the back were brushed aside as he preferred to praise players who had reacted well to working for their third manager of the season. It was genuine too. There’s no false modesty or fake deflection of praise because that’s what he thinks will endear him to those watching on. And it’s this, as much as anything, that has spurred on his side to their brief but impressive run of success under him.

Of course there is more to it that just being popular with his staff. Wins over two former Champions League winning managers in Jose Mourinho and Rafa Benitez in their own back yards and taking a point off one of this year’s finalists, doesn’t just come by showing humility.

The victory over Newcastle was a masterclass in controlling a game without the ball. Ben Foster was called upon to make a tremendous reaction save from a Lejeune header from six yards out, but that apart, even Benitez conceded West Brom should have been two or three goals to the good.

Natural authority

What Mooro has recognised that in taking away the discontent previously evident in the dressing room, he had a squad at his disposal that had reacted well to the structured, disciplined style under Pulis and could implement it to a tee. The characters were there, he just had to get them back on side. It will have surprised no one who knows Darren that he has achieved this. He has natural authority.

Bristol City goalkeeper Luke Steele, another team-mate at Barnsley at the same time, remarked: “Mooro was the kind of player you wanted to do well for. As a keeper, you knew that he was going to do everything to stop the ball getting to you so you felt compelled to do exactly the same if it did. In the final months of his time there he played through a foot injury that you could see was agony for him. Just putting his boot on and taking it off was excruciating but there he was, out on the pitch every week. That kind of desire is inspiring and infectious”.

The reaction of the West Brom players is testament to that. As he conducted, cajoled and whistled his players back into place once possession was lost, they did so, not just willingly but with an intensity that had been absent since March 2017, when the foot was taken off the gas after achieving survival last season.

Given the fact West Brom still have a chance of survival at all this campaign, however unlikely, is remarkable. But if the relegation does come, there seems to be no better candidate to oversee their bounce back from the Championship.

Bristol City’s Lee Johnson and Brentford’s Dean Smith have been linked with the job but with four previous promotions to the Premier League (once with Bradford City and Derby County) and twice with West Brom, Mooro holds as much experience as anyone.

Whether he wants the job or not, it’s made for him. Darren Moore is a man of faith and great character and his popularity among the players might be key in keeping together the bulk of a squad which, under his guidance, would steamroller their way back into the Premier League at the first attempt. If he believes that, and I’m sure he does, then we all should believe it too.