Alan Curbishley said not listening to Sir Alex Ferguson has effectively ended his career (Image: Getty)
What his phone does not do though these days is ring with an offer from a football club to take over as their new manager. In fact it has not done that for some time, he admits.
So Curbishley will sit and watch on Sunday as one of his proteges, Lee Bowyer, leads Charlton into their League One play off final against Sunderland at Wembley.
A few miles across London, another Curbishley fledgling, Scott Parker, takes his first steps as Fulham’s new manager.
Curbishley gave Bowyer his debut as a Charlton player at the age of 17 in September 1994, Parker at the same age in August 1997.
Both are embarking on managerial paths now, Bowyer a year into the role after being made the Addicks’ permanent boss last September. Curbishley is a frequent visitor to his old haunt at the Valley to watch them.
But the man himself, despite being hardly over the hill at 61, and despite nearly 800 games as a manager at Charlton and West Ham, most of them in the Premier League, is resigned to the fact that his time in the hot seat may well now have passed. Why that is, is a mystery to not only him.
Curbishley says: “I’ve been out too long now. I know that.
“My track record is good, but things move on. Maybe chairmen and directors of football think I have been on Mars or somewhere!
Sir Alex Ferguson told Alan Curbishley to keep busy (Image: Getty)
Sir Alex Ferguson said to me: ‘Don’t be out for too long.’
“I watch football all the time. But you are not at the forefront of it all. Most owners in the top two divisions might know who I am – but you are never quite sure.”
The former midfielder has not worked as a manager since leaving West Ham in September 2008 – although he did have a stint as technical director at Fulham. He admits: “Sir Alex Ferguson said to me ‘Don’t be out for too long.’
“But I felt at the time with my record, that I wanted a Premier League club. I was getting offered jobs, some of them trying to keep a team up. But I was waiting for the club that was right.
“Suddenly it had not come along, and you are two or three years down the line. I am not being disrespectful, but I was getting offered Championship clubs, and I was thinking I have 10 years as a Premier League manager under my belt. Why isn’t something happening?
“The crazy thing is I am still in the top ten of managers with games in the Premier League. Fergie did warn me – but perhaps that is one bit of advice I did not take.”
Alan Curbishley’s former fledgling Lee Bowyer leads Charlton into the play-off final on Sunday (Image: Getty)
Curbishley quit West Ham after just under two years in charge, when players were sold without him knowing, and it took a year to sort out his settlement with the club, which did not help.
These days Curbishley is active as a committee member in the League Manager’s Association and is a big advocate of their mentoring scheme, whereby young managers can bring in an old head to help them out. He says: “It is vastly underused. I don’t know if managers see it as a sign of weakness. But Tony Pulis had Gerry Francis around, Michael Flynn at Newport has got Lenny Lawrence with him.
“There is a role for an ex manager that the young managers can call on. Maybe they are struggling mentally or even physically. There is so much experience at the LMA that is not being used. If something like that came up it would be fantastic for me.“
He would not turn down a manager’s job though if it did come up: “I wouldn’t be phased by it. I would not think that I could not do it because I have been out for a while. I don’t think it has changed that much.”
Alan Curbishley’s last job was at Fulham in 2015 (Image: Getty)
More than 700 games in charge at Charlton saw Curbishley win promotion twice to the Premier League – and Sunday will bring back memories of his team’s astonishing penalty shoot out win over Peter Reid’s Sunderland in 1998 – once get them to seventh spot in the top flight. And get interviewed for the England job in 2006.
He is though he says happy now doing his TV work with the Premier League and working with the LMA.
And as for Bowyer and Parker? “I have been watching their progress. I don’t speak to either of them that much, because I don’t want to be seen as a hindrance or jump on the back of what they are doing.
“I text Lee now and then. He is his own man. I hope they do it because the club needs to be back in the Championship. It needs to be bought by someone, and it needs to push on. Times have been tough over there.”