Why Nolan gave up life at top to manage Leyton Orient

Nolan walks in. He is player-manager at Leyton Orient, a dual role that has fallen out of fashion. “It’s unusual these days,” he says. “Kenny Dalglish was successful at it. I’m from Liverpool and I was around then. Hopefully I’ve learnt a bit.” Nolan is solid and Scouse, to the tip of the orange boots he wore that day. Wait. Orange boots? “I know,” he says, chuckling. “The game’s gone.”

It is not the first time that Brisbane Road, nestled amid east London terraces and too grand for League Two, has exerted a pivotal role in Nolan’s life. Back in 2009, when he played for Newcastle United, then newly relegated, he stood in the away dressing room, down the corridor, and delivered the Geordie equivalent of the Gettysburg Address.

Newcastle had lost a pre-season friendly 6-1; an untethered club teetered on a precipice. “There was a stink about the whole place,” Nolan says. “Orient was a very bad day but it changed the shape of the club, because we realised who wanted to go and who wanted to create something which became very special. I wasn’t going to jump ship. I thought, ‘This is where I earn my bread.’”

Under Chris Hughton’s soothing management and with Nolan leading a cabal of players, Newcastle were promoted. It was the same at West Ham United when Nolan was summoned there by Sam Allardyce, who had worked with him at Bolton Wanderers. “A natural,” is Steve Harper’s description of his former team-mate at St James’ Park. This new role has come swiftly, however. Nolan is 33 and, when he left West Ham seven months ago, had a season remaining on his contract and was being courted by Premier League clubs (Newcastle among them). In August, he played Arsenal and Bournemouth; over the past ten days, it has been Crawley Town, Carlisle United and Luton Town, whom they lost 1-0 to on Saturday.

Nolan is player-manager at Orient, a dual role that has fallen out of fashion

TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER, MARC ASPLAND

“There was no moment of, ‘oh yeah, that’s the final nail in the coffin for me at West Ham’, ” Nolan says. “Slaven Bilic was first class and I loved working with him. He said, ‘I can’t guarantee you’ll play, but you’ll always be around my squad.’ I could have picked up my money, but I didn’t feel like I was giving what I can to a team.

“I played 29 times in the Premier League last season, but I can’t give what I give from the substitutes’ bench. There’s a drive inside. I needed a challenge, the next step. Since being rejected by Liverpool as a kid, I’ve had something to prove to myself and to the doubters I’ve always come across. I think — I hope — I’ve always won them over.”

Nolan considered his options. “One offer felt nailed on,” he says, “I had a few others which were positive — a couple in the Premier League, more in the Championship. A few sniffs from abroad. And then one month goes by, two months . . .” In the meantime, he was keeping fit at Orient whose head coach, Ian Hendon, had been at West Ham.

“I spent time with my kids, took my boy to football,” Nolan says. “I was enjoying it, but after two or three months, that hunger to get back was gnawing at me. I thought, ‘I can’t handle this, doing nothing on a Saturday.’ I was missing that buzz. It’s what I needed. I’d been doing it all my life. Where am I going to get that buzz from? Where can I go and make a difference?”

He rejected a contract from Orient — a player can only represent two teams in the same season and he was good enough to play at a higher level — but when Hendon was dismissed, he was offered the job. “I’ve always had a positive attitude but, for once in my life, I was starting to get worried,” he says. “And then this call came and it blew me away. The butterflies started.”

Playing can allow a new manager to guide his team from the inside, but there is a danger that a hectic profession becomes all-consuming. “It’s about how much I put into it,” Nolan says, but he must also invest trust in Andy Hessenthaler, Lee Harrison and Andy Edwards, his coaching staff. There are moments when he must rest.

“In the first week or so, Sam rang me three or four times and said, ‘How are you sleeping, lad?’ ” Nolan says. “I’ve always been a bit of a worrier, but I love my sleep and I was clinging on to four or five hours. I find myself sitting there when I get home, just before tea or just after and my neck’s gone, my head is nodding, I’m slobbering down my shirt.”

Never what you would term a graceful player, Nolan compensated with graft and a knack for goals — he is one short of 100 in the league — but playing still provides a release. “It’s probably the time when I feel at peace,” he says. “When I’m at home, it’s family, but there’s stuff the scouts have sent, things to check and training to prepare. My mind is overactive and I’ve got to learn how to switch off. When I’m on the pitch, I don’t feel like the manager. The lads call me ‘gaffer’, but they can rollick me if I need telling; have the argument and forget about it. But it’s there that I don’t have anything to worry about. I just do exactly what I’ve been asking the lads to do.”

Nolan has won five of nine matches and his team, relegated last May, sit just outside the play-off positions, but Orient has not been a secure outpost. Francesco Becchetti, the owner, employed four managers last season and only recently completed a six-game stadium suspension for kicking Hessenthaler on the touchline.

Nolan might have a two-and-a-half-year contract, but does he have a chance, a real chance? “This isn’t a leap in the dark,” he says. “The president made me believe that I’m the best man for the job. Francesco is a very passionate man, very Italian, wears his heart on his sleeve, but he’s pumped a lot of money in and suffered heartache.

“We’ve got a good working relationship. He comes down to the training ground once a week, we exchange texts before and after games and we’re constantly in contact, which is important. As a manager, I’ve got to be an open book to him, tell him why I’m doing things. He’s been trying to find the person who reflects his passion.”

Nolan, centre left, is called ‘gaffer’ by the squad, but says they are allowed to tell him off if he needs it

TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER, MARC ASPLAND

Nolan leaves his office and takes the lift upstairs to the bar. A clan of family and friends is there, including Jasmine, his daughter and Sonny, his son, decked in Orient kit with 44, Nolan’s number, on the back. He kisses all of them, sponges up the stick about the chance he missed. “These are the people I hold dearly, who I want to prove right,” he says.

He lives in Epping, at the eastern end of the Central Line, with Hayley, his wife. Waiting for him on the family computer — Jasmine has shown him the rudiments; you are unlikely ever to find him on Twitter — is an email with fitness statistics from today’s game. Some he will give to his players (echoes of Allardyce), and some he will withhold, to keep them guessing.

This is his life now; no switching off, for ever another game to prepare for. He has coaching badges to attain, too — he already has his B Licence and speaks highly of the “fantastic, forward-thinking” Welsh FA he studied with — but there will always be something, always be a demand on his time. “If you want to be the best, you’ve got to see it from the bottom up,” Nolan says.

The effort will be gruelling, but he is comfortable with that. The evening is old now — Sonny is no longer practising nutmegs in the hall — but respite is elusive. “This is what I’ve always wanted,” Nolan says, “and I’ll give it everything. I’m an honest lad from a working-class family and I respect those values. I’ll be as honest as a day’s work.”

Sam Allardyce’s view: Nobby will lift those around him if he gets time he needs

“Nobby” has always been a catalyst in the dressing room. He did it for me at Bolton Wanderers and he did it again at West Ham United, where I became the manager and he became the man who reinvented and regenerated a very depressed and demoralised group of players. He was a fantastic signing.

Everyone thought Kevin would be a manager one day, but it’s happened without him really thinking about it. He’ll have to learn quickly. He’ll already have suffered more sleepless nights than at any stage of his life.

I went to Limerick as player-manager and you manage more on the field than off it. That’s a great asset in your first job, because you can affect everything on the pitch and, if he can score the goals he’s capable of, then it will be good for Leyton Orient and good for him.

Hopefully he’ll have a good apprenticeship and not fall foul of an impatient group of owners these days. That’s a huge problem, but I hope he gets that club by the scruff of the neck. If he’s as good a manager as he was a player then he’ll be all right.