For real K, been keeping a little eye on him and respect where respect is due..

I met him after the game today K and he was a class act. Nice guy, and yeah I'm very pleased too.

Wouldn't surprise me if he manages overseas for a while - had a very successful spell at Inter Milan as a player and he's still popular there - even said himself that he'd fancy a spell as boss.

Respect is definitely due.

If he was a white boy he would of been managing in the premiership long time ago. How people like Stewart Pearce/ Glen Roeder/ Gareth Southgate land top job at relatiovely big clubs while Ince has had to start from rock bottom is beyond me.

Will do him some good though. Serving his apprenticeship.

Maximum ratings

He is destined for the very top. I think his name would be tere or there abouts when vacancies

Dont sleep on his achievement last season either. Keeping Macclesfield up after being 8 points adrift when he took over

Have to agree with BT. He has done mre than enough when you consider the lieks of Roy Keane and Gareth Southgate

'Loneliness is in victory or defeat, it never goes away'
He has won his first trophy and promotion beckons but there is plenty the MK Dons manager wants to change

Donald McRae
Tuesday April 8, 2008
The Guardian


Against a barren backdrop in Milton Keynes, with the MK Dons' training ground set hard against the roaring traffic of the A421, time seems to lose all meaning for Paul Ince. In a footballing world far from his past at Old Trafford or San Siro, a small managerial miracle continues to unfold as Ince reaches deep into his previously hidden reserves of patience and generosity. On a cold afternoon, as a concentrated training session moves 90 minutes beyond its scheduled close, Ince finally sends the bulk of his League Two squad to the showers while he remains on a muddy field with four journeymen footballers.

As two wide players shiver on the sidelines, Ince instructs a pair of central midfielders, Keith Andrews and Alan Navarro, in the art of hitting a raking crossfield pass, first from a rolling start and then when the ball has bounced just in front of them. Andrews and Nararro, who never quite made the grade with their former lower-league clubs, do not look much like Steven Gerrard or even the 40-year-old Ince as their initial attempts flounder amid inconsistency and uncertainty. But as Ince stoops low to help position their bodies correctly, so their accuracy slowly improves. His encouraging voice, meanwhile, never wavers.
An hour later, as he drags himself from the pitch, he stresses: "It's easy as a manager to slaughter players without explaining where they're going wrong. Anyone can say 'You're crap' but the player wants to know 'Why am I crap? What am I doing wrong? What can I change?' I don't think most managers give players that sort of time. I like to do a lot of that so, even if I left the club, hopefully people will say they've improved because I spent time to make them better footballers."

As a player Ince loved to call himself the Guv'nor. He was also castigated by his former manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, as "a big-time Charlie", but there is no arrogance or selfishness in his current work. His serious but magnanimous attitude helps explain why he may yet become the best of all the managers who once played under Ferguson. Gordon Strachan, Mark Hughes, Steve Bruce and Roy Keane might all operate at a far higher level but Ince's achievement in 18 months of management borders on the remarkable.

In October 2006 he took charge of Macclesfield, cast far adrift at the bottom of the Football League, and saved them from relegation. He then moved last summer to the widely reviled MK Dons, a club born out of the torn-up remnants of Wimbledon. If they win their two home games in hand this week the Dons will have secured promotion a full month before the season ends. Milton Keynes have also just won the first silverware in their history, after victory in the Johnstone's Paint Trophy final at Wembley 10 days ago. Ince is now on course to become the first black English manager of a Premier League club.

When comparing Wembley with the emotions he experienced last May, Ince says: "It probably meant more at Macclesfield because, if they had gone down, half of them would've ended up playing amateur football and gone back to nine-to-five jobs. It was such a hard task when I took over - 12 points behind from staying up - so I was really pleased. It put me on the map as a manager, but I had to go to Macclesfield to get a job and make a statement that I can be a manager and not just a decent player."

Ince and Keith Alexander, now his successor at Macclesfield, are the only two black managers among 92 Football League clubs and it is hard to avoid the racist implications of that statistical anomaly. "Hopefully the race issue is not a part of it," Ince shrugs bleakly. "I don't know. You look at the Super Bowl the year before and you saw two black coaches. I just think if you're good at your job ..."

The lack of black managers in English football harks back to miserable days on the field in the 1970s. Then, black players were supposed to "disappear" at the first sign of a cold snap or a hard tackle; now their management successors apparently lack the gravitas to control a professional club. "I think it's strange that people like Ian Wright and Les Ferdinand went straight into TV. Maybe they're not cut out to be managers or maybe they knew that the opportunities for them are always minimised. It's just a terrible shame that someone with the passion of Wrighty has been lost."

As the first black player to captain England, Ince now sees himself as a managerial pioneer. "I like to think that I'm the yardstick for people like Andy Cole, Ledley King and Rio Ferdinand to realise that when they do finish playing they can go into coaching or management. I definitely can open the door for black managers. I really believe it and that's why it's important to be as successful as I can."

One of the intriguing by-products of Ince's success is the way he has reversed his image as a player. Rather than the snarling and strutting cliche of the Guv'nor, a more introspective man has emerged. "The loneliness will never go away," he says of management. "That loneliness can be in victory or in defeat. Even when we won at Wembley, I didn't really get that buzz. It was great to see the players win something but it was only when I got home and sat on my own that I could reflect on what they'd achieved. So even in victory you're still lonely. The players are out on the town, dancing and drinking, but for me it's just about getting away to take stock and think.

"I always felt that, because I was a passionate player, people had this misconception, 'Incey's nasty and narky'. But I never got sent off once in my football career in England. I wasn't dirty. I could tackle but I was fair and tried to play football. Yet every time they showed me on TV I was urging someone to get their finger out and people would say, 'Aw, look at Ince, moaning again.' They don't see me away from football and that's something that sticks with me and Roy Keane."

His bond with Keane separates them from Ferguson's other managerial proteges. "Keaney has been fantastic. He was the only one last year, when I was at Macclesfield, who was on the phone all the time, talking and texting, because we were in a similar situation - Sunderland were fifth from bottom [in the Championship] and we were rock bottom. We always had that as players, socially and on the pitch. But as a manager he's urging me on whenever I have a good result and I'm doing the same to him. I respect him as a player but I especially respect him as a man because he was the only one who picked up the phone week in, week out.

"I didn't see Mark Hughes do it, people like that who I played with at Man United. I wouldn't say [Hughes] was a close friend but we were team-mates and we had some good times. But it didn't help him pick up the phone to give me encouragement. It means so much to me whenever I get a text from Roy and he says, 'Great result, come on!' People just remember him snarling, but he's an intellectual guy who has always been very methodical and supportive."

Keane is more aware than most of the financial constraints that have tested Ince at Macclesfield and Milton Keynes - even if his new club do have a 30,000-seat stadium. "People have this preconception because of the stadium. I heard Peter Beagrie saying on Sky the other day, 'Oh, Incey's a lucky man. He's come to a club where the chairman's got a pitful of money.' No, he hasn't. I've spent just a hundred grand this season - 50 grand on Jemal Johnson and 50 grand on Danny Swailes. The rest of them have been free transfers. That winds me up more than anything, to hear Peter Beagrie say I'm a lucky man. The people who get jobs in the Premier League and the Championship are the lucky ones, not me."

Ince will almost certainly transform his luck, and overcome any residual racism, to join Keane in the Premier League soon, but until then he is aware of the grittier benefits of starting at the very bottom. "It makes you appreciate players with passion. The higher you go the more egos you get - and you'll always find one or two bad eggs in Championship and Premiership squads. I can deal with them, but the players here, and at Macclesfield, are not on the greatest amount of money yet football is their life. It means so much to them. So I'm glad I've started here. I've been with a lot of clubs and I've never seen the spirit there has been in the two teams I've managed."

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