Kevin Phillips starts with a confession. “Before I signed for Sunderland I didn’t even know it was by the sea,” says the new manager of South Shields. “Geography clearly wasn’t my strong point but I ended up enjoying my time in this area so much that, in the back of my mind, I’ve always hoped to come back one day.”
The former England striker’s return to the north-east has brought him to Mariners Park, seven miles up the road from the Stadium of Light and a 10-minute drive from the sandy North Sea beaches where he will doubtless sometimes put his fully professional seventh-tier Northern Premier League Premier Division squad through their paces.
At the age of 48 the only Englishman to have won Europe’s Golden Shoe award – in recognition of Phillips’s 30 Premier League goals for Sunderland as Peter Reid’s then side finished seventh in 1999-2000 – has begun 2022 by finally securing his first managerial posting.
Two games and two wins into life in the hot seat Phillips’s tenure has begun brightly enough to suggest that those chairmen who mystifyingly overlooked his numerous job applications could soon have cause to kick themselves.
“When you try and persuade clubs to take a chance on you as a manager but just have constant knock-backs you kind of almost give up,” admits a man who has spent recent years occupying senior coaching positions at Leicester, Derby and Stoke. “Happily Geoff Thompson [the South Shields chairman] was willing to take the risk. I’ve waited a long time for this so I want to do it right and I immediately said I’d be moving up here.”
True to his word, Phillips has rented an apartment and will return to the home in the Midlands he shares with his wife, Julie, and their four children only on days off. “Expectations are high and I know my reputation in the area’s on the line,” he acknowledges.
Given that on the day his predecessor, Graham Fenton, was sacked this month South Shields sat third, Phillips has a hard act to follow. Fenton’s five-year tenure produced promotions and trophies galore but although Thompson described their parting as “incredibly difficult” there was a distinct sense that recent performances and results failed to mirror the club’s ambitious investment.
Two wins under Phillips’s choreography have lifted South Shields to second before Saturday’s home game with the leaders, Matlock Town, when the attendance is likely to top the seasonal record 2,378 crowd who had Mariners Park echoing to the evocative strains of “Super, Super Kev” as Witton Albion were beaten 3-1 on Tuesday.
Although Phillips talks about experiencing life “on the border” between Sunderland- and Newcastle-supporting territory, his new club harbour particularly close ties with the former. Indeed many of those fans who once cheered as his ruthlessly thrilling partnership with Niall Quinn destabilised the best defences regard South Shields as their second team.
“Having been away for so long it was great to hear the crowd singing my name – it’s amazing how life turns out,” says Phillips. “But I expect the chants will be a bit different when we play at Morpeth, which is real black-and-white Newcastle country! Hopefully though the attention will now move away from me and on to the players.”
It is important to stress that his is not a celebrity appointment, designed primarily to boost gate receipts. After spending more than a decade completing countless hard yards on assorted training pitches while coaching alongside a raft of talented managers, perhaps most notably Nigel Pearson and Steve McClaren, Phillips deserves a turn at the helm.
He is an excellent, highly articulate, communicator and his attack-minded vision of a potentially promotion-winning 4-2-3-1 swiftly convinced Thompson to make an arguably slightly left-field appointment.
“When it’s your first job, there’s always going to be doubters, questioning you, saying, ‘You don’t know this league’ but it’s still got two goals and the ball’s white,” says Phillips, whose cousin Tom is married to the Labour politician Jess Phillips. “It’s always nice to prove people wrong but they forget I played non-league.”
That stint with Baldock Town in his native Hertfordshire followed a painful release by Southampton, where he was deemed “too small” to play up front before struggling at right-back. Eventually his attacking ability was recognised by the late Glenn Roeder, then managing Watford, and Vicarage Road proved a stepping stone to six life-changing years on Wearside. When he retired in 2014, Phillips, by then a Leicester player, had scored 282 goals in 660 senior games for nine clubs, 130 at Sunderland, and collected eight England caps.
He remains close to Reid and shared his old manager’s despair as Sunderland plunged into League One. “There was a mixture of upset, anger and frustration,” says Phillips. “But things are finally heading in the right direction under the new ownership, Lee Johnson’s doing a fantastic job as manager and they’re getting 30,000 crowds in a very unforgiving division. I’ve spoken to Lee and hopefully we can bring Sunderland players needing games here on loan.”
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Such loanees should not fear a carbon copy of the infamously sweary Reid. “If teacups need to be thrown I won’t be asking who takes milk and sugar,” jokes Phillips, before emphasising that his old boss was infinitely more nuanced than outward appearances perhaps indicated. “But that’s not the way I want to operate.
“To me, good communication is the most important thing. I need to get to know players and ensure they feel able to be open with me. My job’s about getting the best out of them. This club’s got great ambition and vision and I hope the players and I are going to enjoy the ride.”
If it is anything like the so called “magic carpet ride” Phillips experienced at Sunderland, South Shields supporters are in for a treat.
