Inside Football With - Ashley Westwood: Missing son’s birth is just part of life in a hectic but successful start to the season

The English manager has enjoyed a flying start to this season’s Indian I League - but missing his son’s birth was a sacrifice he had to make in the name of his job.

The Indian I-League is underway and four of my Bengaluru team’s first five games were away. That’s tough given the huge distances, but we’ve won four from five and we’re top.

I’ve also been working on the next module of my UEFA pro licence at St George’s Park in England.

So, after a recent away game in Goa, my schedule was as follows: the game finished at 9pm and I did my press conference by 9.20pm. I was happy, we’d won. I was then taken by car to Goa’s airport where I made a flight to Mumbai with five minutes to spare. I’d checked in online so I could go straight through.

In Mumbai, I swapped terminals to make a 2am flight to London. I watched a re-run of our game in Goa from a memory stick which was handed to me at the end of the game. I landed at 6.45am having not slept and drove from Heathrow to St George’s Park in Burton. I had to be there for 10am.

This sounds terrible, but my son had been born two days previously in Northampton.

I stopped to see him and gave him a hug and a kiss. My partner understands the demands of my job. I will find plenty of time for them when the season finishes in April. I was there for five minutes and then continued driving up the M1 to Burton and the National Football Centre.

There were lots of familiar faces on the course like Robbie Fowler and Marcus Stewart, plus loads of current managers and assistants from varying professional levels. It was a really good group and Brendan Rodgers was the guest speaker, plus an ex SAS senior soldier who spoke to us about leadership.

I stayed for the late dinner and tried to sleep, but it was difficult with the jet lag. I got through Monday after drinking about ten coffees.

St. George’s Park is one of the best training centres I’ve ever seen. It has 12 pristine outdoor pitches varying from natural grass to fibre sand, and one indoor, plus a football centre with medicine, hydrotherapy, physio and sports science. Then there’s the hotel where players sleep. Or, in my case, try to sleep.

On Monday evening, I went to see West Brom’s under 21s against Arsenal under 21s at Tamworth. I needed to sign a player for Bengaluru as our English midfielder Josh Walker, who captained England at the under 20 World Cup in 2009, is injured and out for the season. With eight games in 30 days, I needed to act fast. We’re allowed four foreign players, of which one has to hold a passport from an Asian country.

I liked some of the players in the under 21s game, but didn’t want to be rash and sign someone after only seeing them once. I’d had a player in mind who’d been released from Oxford United.

Michael Collins is 29 and is experienced and fit with 350 games under his belt in the Championship, League One and League 2. He’s a solid pro, a good character, reliable and the man I wanted to be a leader on the pitch. He was a free agent and had offers from several League One clubs.

He’d also played with Josh Walker and called him to ask what I was like and what the set up was like in India.

Our offer, for six months, was a good one, probably equivalent to what he’d get in a year at a mid-table League One club. The advantage is that he has no living costs in India because they’re all taken care of. Michael agreed to join us and his visa took ten days to clear.

I left St George’s on Tuesday night because I needed to be at Heathrow at 4am on Wednesday for a flight to Mumbai.

On the plane, I watched videos of our team’s next opponents, Aizawl, who have just joined the league. I then flew on to Calcutta and on again to Aizawl, in Mizoram, in the far eastern part of India, surrounded by Burma and Bangladesh.

It’s a dry state with no alcohol. It’s colder than most parts of India, goes dark earlier in winter and is hilly and mountainous. Largely Christian in religion and agricultural, it’s very different from the hi-tech urban centre of Bangalore.

I flew economy and business. I’d fly cargo if I have to, as long as I get there. I landed there at lunchtime on Thursday, met my players at the team hotel and took a training session. I’d planned the session around what I’d seen of our opponents’ matches.

The next day, we played the match. The crowd was around 15,000, almost all of them in one big stand surrounding our benches. They were noisy and enthusiastic.

I knew that their players were used to playing at altitude and would run like the wind, so I changed our formation to 4-4-2 – two banks of four with the ability to catch their full-back when they darted forward on their new artificial surface. I’d received reports about the state of the pitch and I was told it was bouncy.

We took the lead halfway through the first half which was more of a battle than a classic game.

We then changed to a 4-3-3 for the second, slowing the game down, playing more possession and seeing the game out. We got our win ahead of the another flight back to Bangalore.

And that’s the life of an English football coach managing a team in India for ONE week…