Last Friday was not Paul Ince’s finest hour. The Blackburn Rovers manager launched what seemed like a paranoid tirade against “envious” people who did not want him or Roy Keane — who had just walked out on Sunderland — to succeed as managers. “I believe there are people out to get us,” he said. “People think we are snarling, horrible people.”

Ince’s detractors nodded sagely — the spoilt former superstar cannot take the pressure of a relegation battle, they thought. But the former England midfield player has known greater pressure than exists in the bottom three of the Barclays Premier League — peer pressure in East London gangs, for instance, and the tension at the foot of Coca-Cola League Two.

The Blackburn board will be thinking primarily of the effects on their bottom line should the club be relegated. No doubt they will sack Ince with a heavy heart if he does not win his next two matches, away to Wigan Athletic today and at home to Stoke City the following Saturday. But they may miss out on the long-term benefits of keeping faith with a man who believes in repaying trust given when times are tough.

Ince is a cousin of Nigel Benn, the former world middleweight boxing champion, but not much else in his family background presaged a glittering future. He was brought up by an aunt in a two-bedroom council flat in Ilford, Essex, after his father left home when he was two and his mother left eight years later. “I shared a bedroom with my brother, sister and cousin,” he once told The Times. “I had to fend for myself from a very young age.” Joining West Ham United as an apprentice was not the end of a troubled adolescence. “I was in a gang from about 13 to 17,” he said. “The big turning point came when I was 17 and the police came to the West Ham training ground after a big punch-up where this guy ended up with broken ribs. John Lyall \ called me into his office and told me that he had spent an hour with the police persuading them not to send me to prison.

“He told me that I had to go and apologise to the police and also to the guy who got hurt and his parents. That pep talk from the manager was a turning point. From then on, I went about my life in a completely different way. There were things about gang life that I loved — that sense of family — but I realised that I had to get my act together.”

Ince worked hard to show his gratitude. “John Lyall was his mentor,” Tony Carr, the West Ham United academy director, said. “He attended his funeral last year, as I did, and he never forgot what John had done for him, setting him on his way as a kid, bringing him into the youth system here and later putting him in the first team.”

Carr, who has also developed players such as Rio Ferdinand and Joe Cole, inherited Ince at 14. “He battled through adversity to become a top, top player and I’m sure it will be the same as a manager,” he said. “He’s still the same Incey that I knew. He has fought hard all his life and whatever is thrown his way he’ll come through. He’s got the strength of character to overcome the rough ride that he is having at the moment.

“That little outburst he had last week is the way he is. He played with passion, he played with emotion, and he manages with passion and emotion. He was full of confidence in his own ability when he came here, he wouldn’t be afraid to speak his mind, and if anyone criticises him and he feels it’s unjust, he’ll say so.”

Carr does not accept that Ince is too highly strung to manage at the top level. “He is a down-to-earth character,” he said. “He has travelled the world and played for some top clubs, but he has never forgotten where he is from. Whatever comes his way, he will dust himself down and get on with life, although we’re talking about Paul as if he has lost his job and that hasn’t happened.”

Three months after Lyall was dismissed in June 1989, Ince left for Manchester United, but East End fans have never forgiven him for being photographed in United kit while still a West Ham player. Ince’s version is that the pictures were intended for release only after the transfer went through, although that explanation has not been universally accepted.

Ince’s playing career, though, is a matter of record — two Premier League titles, FA Cup victories, England caps and a move to Italy — but as he has admitted, he was not universally loved, as anyone who bestowed the title of “Guv’nor” on themselves might expect.

With that degree of self-regard, Ince seemed the type of player who would feel entitled to walk straight into a top job when the time came to move from Guv’nor to gaffer, but he surprised cynics by choosing to learn his craft in the lower divisions. In October 2006, he took over at Macclesfield Town, who were adrift at the bottom of League Two and looked certain to drop out of the league.