From deathbed to dugout: how Kieron Dyer has Southend United flying high again

Kieron Dyer is behind his desk at Southend United's training ground, recounting a tale from the 2002 World Cup in Japan. With time to kill in the England squad, the lifelong chess enthusiast went looking for an opponent and found one in Sol Campbell. It did not go to plan.

"Sol Campbell was a deep thinker, and I asked if he played. He said yes, and I told him I'd pummel him," Dyer says, before bursting into laughter. "I'm not joking, we played for an hour and he'd moved two pieces. If that was how much he was thinking so early … I was like: 'Sol, I'm not sitting here for five hours playing chess with you, mate!'"

Dyer admits he eventually lost to Campbell by default, but the board game remains an unexpected passion. He played as a youngster at school, at Boys' Brigade and for Suffolk — "The only person I couldn't beat was Mr Sharples – if you're reading, I want a rematch" — and carries an impressive 1380 rating on Chess.com, the app "everyone who plays is on". He is currently trying to track down Arsenal's Eberechi Eze on it. Chess is an unexpected passion, another layer peeled back and more proof that public perception and real-life personality can be far removed — particularly for a man whose twenties were spent making headlines.

"Twenty-year-old Kieron Dyer was a hooligan. Let's not get it wrong," he says in a brutally honest self-appraisal of a player once famed for holidaying in Ayia Napa and high-stakes gambling on England trips. "If the people who know you know that you've got a kind heart and spirit, that's all it needs."

His chess aptitude, and the pleasure he takes from thinking in patterns, tactical tweaks and in-game judgment calls, are good indications as to why, aged 47, he has made his foray into management. And it is going rather well.

Second in the National League

Dyer began coaching soon after retiring in 2013, first with Ipswich's academy and under-23 teams, then on Paul Cook's first-team staff at Chesterfield. The top job had not been on his radar, but last season he found himself clashing, in a loving way, with Cook, who encouraged him to test the water. The result is a Southend tenure that has begun swimmingly: one defeat in nine matches has lifted the Shrimpers to second in the National League.

The aim is a return to the Football League, with the club financially stable two years after Justin Rees's consortium completed its takeover. Guardian Sport's conversation with Dyer is politely interrupted by regular door knocks — a window into the standards he has installed. His squad must complete an online wellness check on waking and are required to report to Southend's management office by 9am to sign in. Tardiness is not tolerated.

"If you're late for a meeting, you don't come into the meeting," Dyer says. "And if you're late for training you go home. A £10 or £20 fine doesn't mean anything – it has to hurt."

It is a tactic he has borrowed from his former teammate Craig Bellamy, who himself took it from Vincent Kompany. "I always say coaches are thieves. You steal things from other people that fit how you want to build your culture," Dyer explains.

'I'm watching Real Madrid here'

At 8.15am the small office Dyer shares with his assistant Adem Atay is packed with seven staff. The mood is jovial; rewatching clips from the weekend's 6-1 win at Gateshead makes happy viewing. "I'm watching Real Madrid here," Dyer jokes, before purring at Southend's fourth goal. Particular pleasure is taken in a freeze frame showing five of his players in the penalty area and two more lurking outside it.

Suddenly Dyer lunges at the screen, gesticulating wildly. "Complete the run. Don't stop. You're stretching them," he bellows. He knows the run was not completed but his appetite for improvement is obvious. Yet he is also aware just how difficult a game football is. Perfection is impossible, and in a later team meeting he tells his squad to ignore external mutterings that, having been six up at half-time, they should have scored more. Dyer knows maintaining intensity in such games is tough, particularly at the back end of a three-game week involving 1,200 miles on a coach. "No negatives from the game," he concludes.

The Newcastle years and a father-son bond

The Gateshead trip returned Dyer to the north-east, where he joined Newcastle for £6m in 1999. By the time he left for West Ham eight years later, he had won 32 of his 33 England caps and played in the Champions League. He had also fought with his teammate Lee Bowyer on the St James' Park pitch, nearly retired out of frustration at a misdiagnosed hamstring injury, and been turned upon by supporters for supposedly refusing to play on the right for Sir Bobby Robson at Middlesbrough in 2004. Robson was sacked shortly after.

"A lot of people don't realise our relationship was more than a manager and player," Dyer says of Robson. "Honestly, it was like father and son. We used to bicker at each other, hug each other, kiss each other."

The reality of what was portrayed as a major fall-out was more nuanced. Dyer had seen others push back on playing out of position and get their way. "Because of what happened to me as a kid I was thinking: 'I won't be taken advantage of.'" He is referring to being sexually abused by his now deceased great-uncle Kenny during his pre-teens, something he wrote candidly about in his autobiography, Old Too Soon, Smart Too Late.

Guarded off the pitch, extrovert on it

With training approaching, Dyer is outside on his own, wheeling goalframes into position and meticulously placing discs on the grass. He enjoys the solitude, describing himself as "very guarded". Atay, who worked with Dyer at Ipswich, confirms that on their shared car journeys one of them drives while the other sleeps.

"I'm just: football club, home. I don't go out; I don't really have a life outside of football. I'm happy with it," Dyer says.

And yet, once the session begins, introverted Dyer becomes extroverted Dyer. He enthusiastically explains a trio of complex drills, splitting 24 players into six teams. He encourages; he admonishes; he joins in. The electric pace may be long gone — Dyer has so much metal in his legs that for a time he carried his own X-rays to speed up his passage through airport security — but the touch and deftness of pass remain.

Post-training the losing team must spin a wheel of misfortune; punishments include burpees, collecting equipment and a week without pool and darts. "That one devastates them," Dyer says. "I particularly enjoy it when they have to make the staff hot chocolate." His day is thereafter peppered with meetings, phone calls and planning. He still speaks regularly to Cook and turns for advice to people such as the former England caretaker manager Peter Taylor, a frequent visitor to training, as well as Bellamy and Tony Mowbray.

A second chance after the deathbed

Dyer can draw on myriad experiences, within and outside the game, most recently life-saving surgery. In 2015 he was diagnosed with primary sclerosing cholangitis and by 2023 he required a liver transplant. During an overnight stay in a Chesterfield hotel, Dyer woke in agony and went by taxi to Addenbrooke's hospital in Cambridge, 130 miles away. Three months later he was still waiting.

"That was mentally challenging," he says. "They sent me home for my own sanity."

Within two days Dyer was recalled for surgery, the operation taking place three years ago last Saturday. The man now plotting Southend's route back to the Football League does not take a single day of it for granted.

"Being on your deathbed certainly humbles you," Dyer says. "Not many people get second chances."