WHEN WE WIN THE CRIME RATE GOES DOWN

OWEN COYLE knew he had to get at least one thing right when Sir Alex Ferguson came calling back in August.

Not daft, Owen.

So a pal was despatched to find two bottles of the finest red. After all, if Sir Alex can't get a decent claret at Burnley, where can he?

It was a daunting test so early in Coyle's Premier League career.

He passed. Just.

"Even though I don't touch a drop, I got the two best bottles of red wine," Coyle says. "I even started reading the notes that went with them so I could pretend I knew what I was on about. But I knew I wouldn't get away with that.

"The funny thing is that I then went to put the two bottles of great red in the fridge. Someone stopped me, thankfully. And I think Sir Alex enjoyed his glass."

More than he enjoyed the landmark beating his team had just endured, no doubt.

Yet the Manchester United manager was conspicuously magnanimous in defeat on that memorable night.

Because while Ferguson might raise an eyebrow at the idea of a Gorbals teetotaller, he would raise a glass to the work ethic of someone who has graduated from tough Glaswegian streets to the highest echelon of football.

He would see a kindred spirit.

Heading from the Turf Moor pitch to his office, Coyle leaves you for dead at the bottom of the steps.

When Coyle looks up at a flight of stairs - like he did when his paper round took him up the 23 flights inside every Glasgow tenement block he serviced - he sees an opportunity. A challenge.

Maybe it has something to do with being part of a family of 11 raised in a three-bedroomed house.

He says: "I've got five brothers and three sisters.

"We had three bedrooms. Mum and dad's bedroom, the girls' bedroom and the boys' bedroom. Two double beds in it. Three boys in each bed. That's why I am so thin. I was one of the last to fight my way out and get to the dinner table.

"And you know what? I wouldn't have swapped it for the world. It's a tremendous support system."

Such a tremendous support system that every other weekend, the Citizens Theatre in the Gorbals has to rope in extra help to make the tea and coffee, to meet and greet.

Because 79-year-old mother-of-nine Frances Coyle - a worker there for nearly four decades - has embarked on a 320-mile odyssey to watch her son go through mental torture in a Premier League dugout.

"My mum would never move from Glasgow - she loves it there. But she still comes down for most of the home games," Coyle says. "A lot of my family do. It's a great help. When I played for the reserves the other day, I wasn't even changed after the game when I had messages from a couple of my brothers giving me stick about how I had played. They had watched the game on Liverpool TV!"

Loony bin

With a family so embedded in Glasgow's Irish community - the area where Coyle was raised was sometimes referred to as Little Donegal - you can only imagine the consternation when he spurned the chance to become Celtic manager.

His loyalty to a fellow manager precludes him from saying he was offered the role eventually filled by Tony Mowbray.

But there is not a soul in football who doesn't know the Celtic job was Coyle's for the taking.

"Celtic is my team and Celtic will always be my team," he says. "And if you said a couple of years ago that I would have a chance of getting the Celtic job and I would turn that chance down, I would have taken you to the loony bin.

"When you look at it, there would be a great chance of winning things, a chance you would play in the Champions League every season.

"And this is where I don't want Burnley fans to take offence but there is nobody more ambitious than me.

"But I looked at the whole thing. Family-wise, we love the area we are in, the kids are at school.

"Also, while I think Owen Coyle has been fantastic for Burnley Football Club, I think Burnley Football Club has been fantastic for Owen Coyle."

And Owen Coyle has been fantastic for himself.

A player who defied his lightweight frame and lack of game-changing pace to enjoy a long and fruitful career.

More importantly, a football man fully aware of the privilege to daily live and breathe the game.

Bugbear

The drive north to meet Coyle was to the radio soundtrack of a lady called Sheryl stripping bare the tragedy that is Paul Gascoigne.

The hollow, tortured embodiment of abused talent.

At journey's end waited the antidote. A man who rails against unfulfilment.

"If I had never been a professional footballer or a coach, I would pay a fiver to go and play a game of five-a-side," says Coyle. "I don't know whether that is commonplace nowadays.

"As a player, I was delighted to do what I did.

"My source of frustration is that if there is a truly naturally talented player and they are not utilising that . . . that is a bugbear to me.

"Because being what you might call an ordinary player, you look at these guys and think . . . go and show everyone how good you are. But talent is not enough. You need hard work, you need to be a team player."

Coyle: Reserve outing

And you need to be as besotted by the game as Coyle is.

"I like to sit with a young player and only talk football. If I sit with a player and he starts talking money, he is the wrong player for me.

"They have agents, representatives who can do that. I only want to know if they want to be the best player they can be."

And if they can meet a challenge on every single day of their lives.

Burnley Football Club faces one for every second of its existence.

Coyle says: "If we are able to retain Premier League status, it would be ten times the achievement of getting there.

"We are going to have to do it under a budget that has never been known in the Premier League.

"In terms of where we should be because of the finance . . . we should be tailed off, nowhere near anyone else. But we're not because we believe in what we are doing.

"Believe me, this is not a challenge that fazes me.

"I have always had tremendous mental strength. You either feel sorry for yourself or you get up in the morning and you do something about it. That's the way I've always worked."

And that's what convinced the club's operational director Brendan Flood and chairman Barry Kilby to recruit Coyle from St Johnstone in November 2007.

He is grateful they took what many perceived to be a risk. But the loyalty he feels is not just to them but to a community that has so often been cloaked in pessimism.

Coyle explains: "We represent the whole town. We don't take that lightly. Last year, crime rates are less when we win and more people go to work on a Monday.

"That was another thing that mattered to me when I took the job.

"In Scotland, it doesn't matter whether you are in Falkirk, Motherwell or Aberdeen, you see buses going to Glasgow to see Celtic and Rangers.

"All you see here are Burnley shirts. To take 36,000 down to the play-offs at Wembley when the population of the town would fit inside Old Trafford is remarkable.

"In terms of the percentage of the population that comes to watch us, we are probably the best supported team in world football. So it's important we send the right message out. We are not representing the club but the whole town as well."

Respect

The passion for his subject is clear, words falling in waves of enthusiasm.

That sort of fervour inevitably spills over on match days. In common with most of his fellow managers, Coyle has had his run-ins with officials.

But he is fully behind the notion of Respect.

Not necessarily as patented by Football Association suits. Not a programme, but a principle.

He says: "It's the best word - respect. If we can respect each other - referees, players, coaches alike - then we've all got a chance.

"As part of that, it's important that people use their social skills.

"It's like this, Andy. If I do not like the article you have written from this interview, I call you and say: 'Andy, you've made an arse of that'. You might say: 'Owen, you are right'. Then we go from there - we move on.

"I've lost my rag a few times. I'm vocal, I'm passionate.

"Last year, we were playing QPR here, the linesman gave a goal and I was adamant the player was offside.

Coyle: Passionate

"I gave the linesman pelters. I left him without a name - I really did.

"And I said to him: 'When you see that back, make sure you ring me up and apologise - if you are big enough to give the decision, be big enough to call me'.

"The next day, I saw it and I was wrong and he was right. So I phoned someone to get the lad's number and called him.

"I said: 'Listen, the way I went about it was all wrong anyway so I apologise for that. Right or wrong, I shouldn't have done it. And equally, I was actually wrong so I apologise for that as well. You got the decision right'.

"And he said that was the first time he had got a call like that and he said thanks.

"I know how difficult their job is. Equally, they have to realise what goes with trying to win Premier League games. It's a two-way street and I think we can get the balance."

Rivalry

If you want to see passion, if you want to see fervour, head for Ewood Park today.

Police have ordered Burnley fans travel on special early-morning buses to avoid clashes with locals.

Coyle says: "I think it's great to have a rivalry. I grew up in Glasgow and I saw how horrible it could be.

"Those days should be finished. Enjoy your team. You should be proud that you have two towns in the greatest league in the world that probably shouldn't be there.

"Be proud of that fact. Enjoy the game and enjoy the rivalry . . . and make sure that's all there is."

He may not know that a good red is best served unchilled, but Owen Coyle knows how to behave.

• BLACKBURN 3, BURNLEY 2

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