Gurnica: The Picasso Portrait of Iain Dowie

The imperfect face of Iain Dowie signifies all that is good and honest about ‘The English Game’. His visage emits the same ugly charm of a tight, pre-war, lower league ground flanked with Rainham Steel advertising hoardings, and with an obscured view of a Morrisons behind the stands. If Dowie were a taste it would be a lingering mouthful of gravelly mince meat from a Pukka pie washed down with metallic bitter. If he were a smell it would be an eye-watering bouquet of unaired polyester and BO, complimented by a peaty finish of Old Holborn.

For poor Dowie has had to endure a career full of cruel comparisons. In his playing days it has been said he resembled The Borg, Davros or Sloth in the Goonies. But as this mantle has now passed to Liverpool’s Dirk Kuyt, another flattering doppelganger is suddenly required: perhaps an inter-galactic mix of Star Wars’ Admiral Ackbar and Futurama’s Dr Zoidberg will suffice, as there has always been something vaguely marine and deep-sea about him. It may be true that Dowie is still no oil-painting and rather a Picasso portrait, but these days he holds an air of groomed respectability. This has been added to the upright demeanour of a proud and admirable figurehead tangled in the maelstrom of an endless, desperate relegation battle.

Dowie has always had an infectious energy and, like hooliganism, can never be entirely eradicated from the sport. As a player, he was a journeyman, hopping from one sinking stone to the other. As a manager he was a ‘relegation-zone specialist’ in the company of dogged names such as Bassett, Warnock, Pardew and Royle. Employing a relegation specialist is a sort of self-fulfilling prophesy: the club is certain to be relegated. This is despite stumbling upon immediate, inexplicable success, often attributed to an abstract, superstitious shift in culture or training methods, such as re-introducing the card school on the team bus, or the kit-man reading lesser-known Neville Chamberlain speeches at half-time.

However, such fragile plights would always end the same way: after blowing a half-time lead on the final day, an injury time goal in some far-away corner of the country would crackle into 20,000 sets of headphones and precipitate a tearful pitch-invaded farewell from the league.

The type of player that appealed to these manager’s sensibilities was inevitably not glamorous nor a record signing. Instead struggling managers operated in a world of hatchet-men, target-men and utility players. This explained why Iain Dowie was the essential choice for the Sky Sports pundit sofa on Transfer D-Day; whilst the rest of the panel gave a Gallic shrug of their shoulders at the non-news being reported and then made 'W' symbols with their thumbs and index fingers in response an obscure loan agreement, Dowie was bristling with vitality and as keen as a beaver.

The excitement he generated over Guy Demel’s humble transfer to West Ham was palpable, combining a furrowed brow with clenched fists in an intense mime accompanied with coiled, blurted descriptions: ‘Big, strong full-back. A real bolster to the defence. Powerful…POWERFUL. Fantastic acquisition.’

Dowie often provided clarity after hazy, distracted comments from Sky’s anchor, Natalie Sawyer, who could barely cover up an understandable feeling of listlessness with sudden swathes of faux-enthusiasm. Dowie then effortlessly plugged holes and then craters after increasingly blank announcements of another club closing in on a deal. Perhaps to him, the midnight deadline had a childlike Christmas Eve fantasy about it, where a sneak-preview revealed some of the presents were 7 foot long, worth £10 million and wrapped in Armani cloth.

The lamp-lit car park vigils of frustrated reporters and agitated supporters were in no doubt encouraged by litres of polystyrene-clad coffee or hip flasks full of Benedictine. These fevered throngs had a wild-eyed nature about them rarely even seen at Big Brother evictions. Perhaps they were capable of pitch-forking their way into a blockaded North London bunker and lynching Arsene Wenger for his spend-thriftiness. They, along with Dowie, embody the misguided, frenzied and blind passion of The English Game. And there was probably that same smell of pies.