Shakespeare's Final Act

It’s mid-December 2015 and, such is the cyclical nature of football, as one man’s story is just beginning, another’s is ending.

As Jose Mourinho, the man who had once famously described him as: “too old to change his mentality” and ridiculed the absence of a major trophy win on his CV, stood in the technical area adjacent to him, powerless to claw back any semblance of influence over his dissenting playing staff, Claudio Ranieri was about to prove that he who keeps learning stays young.

On that balmy night at the King Power Stadium, Mourinho’s second Chelsea chapter closed. The pen depicting Claudio Ranieri’s fairytale was about to start scribbling away.

In a season which dominated headlines and captured imaginations worldwide, this was the first result - a 2-1 home victory over the previous season’s champions Chelsea - that thrust Leicester City into the limelight.

The thing about limelight though, is that it can change complexions.

As this became a tale which just had to be told, football writers, journalists, pundits and supporters scrambled to try and construct the narrative. A club that had built steadily off the pitch and achieved a sumptuous blend of grit and finesse on it - thanks in no small part to the work of predecessor Nigel Pearson and his trusty aides Steve Walsh and Craig Shakespeare - were daring to dine at football’s top table.

The plucky underdog, the perennial underachiever, was wearing the dinner jacket of top dog.

After they’d stayed for the main course following this impressive starter, Leicester City got their just desserts. A maiden top-tier title.

When fairytales come with a dollop of enchantment, they have a tendency to capture the imagination of an entire globe and to break down those linguistic, geographical or political barriers that exist. The Leicester City story became everybody’s story.

Fast forward almost two years and that reader’s grasp of the story remains.

The fairytale came to end in the orange-infused streets of Seville when orange seemingly became the new black as Claudio Ranieri’s sacking led to the kind of widespread mourning reserved for treasures of a national proportion.

The obituaries were as glowing as the pointed words about Craig Shakespeare and the Leicester players were sharp. The fairytale had become a tragedy, the heroes the villains of the piece and everything had all gone a bit… Shakespearian.

Time has passed, Leicester City faded almost back into the background, and those who previously had no reason to speak of them returned to their ‘Big Four’ daily read.

That was until, after four months and 26 games, Craig Shakespeare was sacked earlier this week.
Everyone, again, had an opinion. Everyone wanted their say. This Leicester City story clearly still belonged to more than just those who had been travelling the country to watch underwhelming performances this season.

But had those who cared to criticise the casting directors in this tremendous tale of Leicester City’s, the Thai owners of the club, also taken such effort to travel up to Huddersfield to watch an abject display against a newly-promoted side who Tottenham Hotspur (the same Tottenham Hotspur who finished a full 11 points behind Leicester in the title-winning season) dispatched with ease a couple of weeks later?

Had they been at Arsenal for the season’s curtain-raiser to see what should been an opening day victory turned into ‘nul points’ through some questionable substitutions?

Had they consistently despaired at a sentimental reluctance to change from a predictable and dated 442 formation which only endured through an unwavering sense of loyalty to the self-policing dressing room that had delivered former glories?

As the sequel to the Leicester success story was written, Shakespeare was unable to break character. ‘Shakey’ to the players, he couldn't quite shift those unintentionally undermining tags; ‘nice guy’ and ‘great coach’. Andy King starting games in central midfield over three years after promotion to the Premier League caused some to question his ability to ad lib.

In the wake of Ranieri’s departure, Leicester fans had to endure the mud that was thrown in their club’s direction. The crazy notion that Ranieri had somehow earned the right to take their club to a point lower than that which it was at when he arrived. That consistently poor performances were acceptable just because of what had gone before.

Since Shakespeare departed, the afterword has been much the same. “How could they?” “The game’s gone”. “He deserved more time”.

But is there not something admirable about a club wanting to achieve again? To try and make that fairy tale that brought with it the world’s affection something more than a one-story series? To create, for the likes of Shakespeare and Ranieri, a legacy that reads as more than just one season of wonder instead of the club becoming the old drunk in the corner of the bar talking about how he was once everybody's friend and on top of the world?

It seems as quickly as people were happy to build Leicester up, they are content to just as swiftly tear them down. That old British thirst for a fall from grace.

There is no doubting that the decision to cast aside Shakespeare was ruthless. But also without doubt is the message that it sends: Leicester City are no longer happy to be perennial Premier League strugglers or bouncing between English football’s top-two tiers.

In years to come, as we dust off the cover of the old Leicester fairytale, Craig Shakespeare will be remembered with reverence. Managers will come and managers will go as that football cycle doesn't stop turning. But Shakespeare's name is written in Leicester City folklore.

Just as Mourinho found his, such a respected figure within the football fraternity as Shakespeare is, another role will come calling for ‘Shakey’. And when he looks back on his instrumental part in nine years of unprecedented success at Leicester City he’ll realise that such longevity was the exception and not the rule.

Enter stage left, Leicester’s next protagonist.

Time To Say Goodbye

Arms aloft, a wave, 2,500 buoyant fans singing his name, he turns and he is gone. As Claudio Ranieri strode across the turf at the Estadio Ramon Sanchez Pizjuan no one in that away end, where a defeat had never felt more like victory, would have envisaged that this was Claudio’s last stand. That as planes from Seville shakily touched ground in the chaos of Storm Doris another storm was brewing; a media storm that would follow the news that Ranieri had been sacked.

The decision to end the Ranieri era, a glorious and unprecedented era, was the correct one. As Leicester City fans we have had to become used to our club being global news. Of everyone wanting a piece of the big Leicester pizza pie yet only ever knowing half the recipe.

As the unlikeliest of footballing stories began to unfold in late 2016, football pundits and experts scrambled and bumbled - at a loss to try and explain how this unbelievable team was doing what it was. For once, eyes that had previously been fixed on United, Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea and Man City were looking the wrong way. It wouldn't last, Vardy and Mahrez would dry up, they hadn't played anyone good yet. Not one of them could accurately summarise the strength of that remarkable team.

Those same eyes have been caught diverted once more. They haven't seen the visible confusion of the players as Shinji Okazaki replaced Robert Huth and our final throw of the dice was to change our right back against Chelsea. They haven't travelled to Stamford Bridge, Anfield and Old Trafford to see us take a pasting because Claudio persisted with a 442 formation which just didn't work without Kante. And they haven't seen the persistence with the likes of Mahrez, Huth and Morgan who just haven't delivered this season whilst the likes of Damarai Gray and Daniel Amartey have sat, in-form, frustrated on the bench.

The success of last season was built, in large part, on an incredible team spirit. Eleven players working together for each other with the whole being greater than the sum of their parts in the season of their lives. It was the kind of spirit that pulled them through on a cold Wednesday night in January at White Hart Lane for a crucial 1-0 win (several of which would follow in the run-in) and in the early part of the season had them dubbed ‘Comeback Kings’ after resurrections against Villa, Southampton and Stoke City.

That spirit has ebbed away. Where players previously clapped good intentions they now point out mistakes. Riyad Mahrez, provider in chief last year, no longer seems to want to pass. The selfless work of Jamie Vardy for the team has been replaced by the kind of conserving energy, pointing and staying in shape that would never have been coached into him at Stocksbridge Park Steels or Halifax.

These are the things that we, the fans that follow this team home and away, see where others don’t. The reality is that Leicester City have been dire for months. No goals in 7 league games, no away win in the league all season and defeats against the likes of Sunderland, Swansea, Burnley and Hull. That’s without mentioning a defeat to 10-man League One side Millwall in the cup.

A big thing I have read is that Claudio should have been given more time, but what was going to change? He’d changed the personnel. He’d tinkered the formation. He’d not recruited in vital positions in the transfer window. He’d tried the carrot and the stick multiple times apiece to no avail.

This was not the Leicester City of their first season in the Premier League who were bottom of the league but competing in matches, scoring goals and running through brick walls for their manager Nigel Pearson. I have rarely seen so many abject performances over a prolonged period of time and questions would have been asked a lot earlier in the season were it not for progress from a poor Champions League group (not one of those teams was better than lower half Premier League quality) and for allowing a somewhat inevitable hangover from the party of our lives. Claudio had been given his time.

The accountability which keeps standards high had to come at some point.

It’s all very well Michael Owen or Jamie Carragher wanting him to see out the season. The ‘Twittersphere’, awash with fans of other clubs who feel it’s their business or their right to judge this decision or to slate our club, seemed to think Ranieri had earned the right to take us to a level lower than that we were at when Claudio first arrived. I assume that those people would be at Bristol City away on a Tuesday night with us in The Championship next season? That they were so entitled to an opinion on the merits of Mark De Vries or Elvis Hammond? That they put money in a bucket to save the club when it was in administration?

For the casual observer, relegation for Leicester would have simply been a shame.

Maybe Claudio’s biggest crime was to be too nice. The outpouring of emotion about his sacking has been akin to the disgust at an elderly grandad being pushed over in the street. He always stirred the emotions Ranieri and there’s no doubting his honour, his dignity and his humility. There is, however, plenty of reason to doubt that the players still felt this warmth towards him with rumours of changed training schedules, bewilderment at team selections and falling out with popular members of backroom staff.

Rightly or wrongly, Claudio had lost some of the players. Those players need to question what they have offered this season and in an ideal world they would be more accountable but you can’t sack 23 players and the way football works the manager should be culpable for poor results. Leicester's results (despite a ‘good defeat’ in Seville where, even then, they were poor for 70 minutes) showed no signs of change and they were in a downward spiral.

Ranieri will be a legend forever. Our most successful manager ever and a man who told us to dream and then delivered something beyond even our wildest dreams. Some of the days of our lives are thanks to Claudio but those days couldn't be a free pass to undo the good work of those who had gone before. He leaves with both his legacy and that of his predecessors intact.

As Andrea Bocelli sang on the pitch prior to our crowning glory against Everton last season, it was time to say goodbye.

A Fond Farewell To 2016

There are times, even now, that it still gets me. On a quiet train journey home, along the early-morning walk to work or just lying in bed at night trying to fall asleep. ‘Wow’.

The 2016 Leicester City story will live within me until the grave.

For Leicester City fans, 2016 is a year to bid a fond farewell to but also one to be harked back to at will - a landmark, pinnacle, watershed year. The beauty of reminiscence is in the snapshots, those freeze-frame moments and memories which, together, paint a perfect picture and tell the most unlikely of stories.

And from 2016, there are plenty...

Standing aghast in the away end at The Etihad in Manchester on a rainy February afternoon where the prevailing emotion to greet Robert Huth’s bullet header putting us 3-0 up was one of shock rather than joy. That palpable time-slowing sensation that was a by-product of 3,000 people simultaneously holding their heads and wondering: “what the fuck is happening?”. Reverberations being transmitted nation-wide in tandem with the splendour of Mahrez’s dancing feet.

So late in the day when Leonardo slid in to bundle a ball over a white line of such significance that it caused an earthquake. A stadium erupted and the few minutes that were left of that match against Norwich City were played out to a deafening crescendo: “he scores goals so that’s alright with me”.

Being politely ushered out of Selhurst Park a full 15 minutes after the final whistle had blown when one chant, one declaration, had refused to subside: “We’re gonna win the league, we know you won’t believe us”. The point at which the irony in that very notion was swept away and a collective belief which corresponded with that of those eleven players on that pitch resided in its place. An assertion now, not speculation. A set of supporters who had seen the sublime to the ridiculous enough times to know that what was happening right then was both in equal measure.

At Vicarage Road when Mahrez illuminated an away end anxiously waiting in the dark for that spark, for that push along the tunnel at the end of which a heavenly light awaited. Everything about Leicester was vintage that night; the defensive resilience, the industrious midfield and the star dust on top. At the scene of our lowest low, we marched on towards our highest high with a Riyad rocket.

When Claudio’s tears up in Sunderland epitomised the passion, the absurdity of the situation and the enchanting and encapsulating nature of this fairytale we were living through. Vardy was back to his record-breaking clinical best and up in the gods we danced a victory dance, man and woman, old and young. Down in the doldrums, they clapped our players off their home turf for the second season in a row. We had become the nation’s second team.

Only once in that run in did it feel like the weight of the world was not behind us but instead on our shoulders. Jon Moss on a one-man mission to spoil the party sent us through the full range of emotions. From pure rage to pure ecstasy in minutes as Leonardo showed mighty great balls of steel to tuck away the last minute penalty. “He scores goals so that’s alright with me”.

Following Leicester in 2016 was a novel experience. The well-wishers and the “we hope you do it”s on the road, the throngs of international press that scrambled for fan interviews outside stadiums and the hordes of Italians who made a pilgrimage to our city to share in the success of their countryman Ranieri.

And, talking of Italians, Bocelli… Beautiful. Brilliant. Bocelli.

These memories are unique in that they were shared internationally with the watching world but simultaneously so personal. I would not expect for anyone who is not a football fan to ever understand that. Since when were they at the centre of a sporting story that captured the imagination of the world? When did they experience, first-hand, a whole city united in joyous celebration? When did they, week-by-week, see an event unfold before their very eyes that was considered ten times less likely than Elvis being found alive?

They say that there are things which supposedly made 2016 a bad year; death, division and decline. All the antithesis of the Leicester City story; the team immortal, the city together and the football club ascending.

They also say that all good things must come to an end, and so it may prove. Goals may never mean as much as they did before, that stadium might never shake so vigorously with delight as it has done prior and maybe emotions will never again be stirred as totally as experienced in those perfect moments. So even if alongside Bowie, Prince, Wogan and Ali something has died, the memories will endure forever more.

And later in the year, the walk down Wembley Way. The Wednesday nights under the lights with that spine-tingling Champions League anthem and the raucous roar that followed it against Porto. The accolades and awards and the books and films to follow. The descent back down to earth and a return to normality which only serves to heighten the magic of those moments before.

They are the memories that have me misty-eyed. The pictures in my mind to which I will cling. The things that made 2016 great.

May auld acquaintance never be forgot.

An Inexplicable Explanation

It’s July 2011. The summer after I had returned from four months of travelling in The Americas, aged 22, I’m unsure of my next steps but certain they won’t be nearly as adventurous as those taken during the preceding four months. I create a list.

To this day, on my computer, resides that list. Titled ’50 things to do before I die’ - and probably an attempt to reassure myself that I wasn’t about to embark to on a monotonous grind until retirement - I remember little about what prompted me to put that list together but vividly actually doing so.

I never made it to 50 things and to this day the list stands untouched at 29. Somewhere amongst the 29 reads ‘see Leicester City win the FA Cup’. Some things have been accomplished, others retain that aspect of ‘to do’ about them. Including that elusive FA Cup.

With fresh perspective, that FA Cup doesn’t seem so important right now. Because on Sunday afternoon Leicester City have the chance to win The Premier League at Old Trafford in a tale that for me - and almost every other Leicester City fan - seemed so wildly incomprehensible that it was never even close to contemplation. Let alone bucket lists.

The clichés have been done to death. A fairytale, a great story, a miracle. But with any tale there’s a structure. A rhyme and reason. An element of expectation, good or bad.

Nobody saw this coming.

Being a Leicester City fan hasn’t always been easy. Put together a list of things that can happen to a football club and Leicester City have been through most in the last 20 years; promotions, relegations, administration, a ground move, cup wins, takeovers, La Manga sex scandals, play-off heartbreaks, the greatest of great escapes and a string of managers.

Boring it certainly is not.

This is not intended to be a sob story. More an explanation of why an explanation does not come easy. Because in the past few weeks and months people have asked me about what could be about to happen (the pessimist in me still can’t bring myself to say it will) and often I’ve not entertained the question. I’ll shake my head in disbelief and say ‘crazy’ or puff my cheeks and exclaim ‘insane’. I do this because this has a meaning rooted far deeper than something I’m able to encapsulate amidst small talk.

I’ve followed Leicester City since 1997. If I added up the money I have spent on doing so it would probably be the biggest expenditure in my life alongside food and drink. If I added up the time that I have spent watching Leicester it would probably equate to more than that which I have spent in the company of people I consider good friends. If I could summon up the energy I have put into watching Leicester City over the years into one collective effort then I single-handedly could achieve something unknown to man.

The truth is that Leicester City is part of my identity. Following them has taken me to the deepest darkest corners of England but simultaneously to the top of the world.

I will never forget walking away from Vicarage Road after that Deeney moment as ‘Yellow’ by Colplay blared out over the tannoy and Watford fans celebrated on the pitch – I barely spoke on the journey home. Standing in disbelief in Stoke as time ebbed away and relegation to the lowest point in the club’s entire history was confirmed. Just knowing, as Kermorgant stepped up on a cold Tuesday play-off semi-final night in Cardiff, that another entry on the list – seeing Leicester play at the new Wembley – would have to wait a little longer. Filling out a membership form to join a Supporters’ Trust in order to try and help save the club from extinction and dropping coins in a bucket to the same effect. Weaving through hordes of taunting Wolves supporters having just lost a crucial relegation six-pointer where we were 3-0 up at half time only to go on to lose 4-3. Manchester United fans counting down the time that we had left in The Premier League as the minutes on the old scoreboard at Filbert Street ticked by and (what we thought were) our halcyon days were ending. The numerous days or evenings where I sat in a car for hours on end only to see guys who were paid more in a month than I earn in a year fail to show even a hint of caring half as much as I did.

They say that the bad times make the good ones better but you don’t embark on a lifetime supporting Leicester City in expectation of the reward of those good times. The victory and the glory is only ever secondary.

It’s mad, but Leicester City can change my mood. They can ruin an otherwise good day and brighten an otherwise sullen one. People who do not follow a football team often fail to understand that hold football has on people. Challenge them to spend so much time and effort on something and they’ll find it impossible not to care too. I’ve tried, in times of footballing despair, to vow that I’ll never again care about it so much.

But then it gets me. Years pass and once more; knots in the stomach, a shaking hand, a resting heart beat anything but restful. Leicester City can affect me physically.

Why? Because Leicester is my city. This is my cause. Football is not a matter of life and death but by the very same measure it’s more than just a game. Football clubs are rooted in communities, passed through bloodlines and markers in otherwise ordinary lives. I wouldn’t change any of those moments because, throughout it all, the one constant in every time good or bad? People who feel exactly the same, stood next to me sharing in it all. My dad, stood next to me sharing in it all.

Leicester City stand on the brink of sporting greatness. They could be about to achieve something that will see me die a happy Leicester City fan at a stage of life where I hope I have decades more to live. If we win The Premier League, what happens from here matters not. Those who do not support Leicester City are misguided with the misconception that a return to what we know as normality is the worst that it can get.

The Twitter war of words, the ‘banter’, the pundits. Everyone wants a piece of this Leicester City story. In a world where hashtags are used to quickly summarise meaning of something, for this story there are none that fit. This is a story with a global appeal, but it is not one with global meaning.

As Leicester City fans, this is our experience and attached to it is our meaning. It’s the dream that they never would have marketed to us because no Leicester City fan would ever have bought it. It’s real and it’s magical. But not for the 35 games that have gone before, for the lifetimes that have gone before.

We say we’re Leicester til we die. Make us immortal, lads.

The Unspoken Leicester City Dream

If you were there you will have noticed it. You might not have said anything, but you wouldn’t have needed to. It spoke for itself.

Amid talk of a bumper new deal – bumper in the sense that it will bump him towards a salary package that truly reflects the remarkable value he’s brought to his team this season - Jamie Vardy had just crashed in a memorable goal to give Leicester City a lead over Liverpool. It was the kind of goal that television cameras can always document but never detail. The kind of goal that is a justification, an explanation, of why - in an era of free internet streams and Sky Sports - people still pay inflated admission fees to watch live football. The explosion in that stadium was every bit as majestic as the strike itself.

And then the aftermath. An almost stunned silence. Sweet and true as it left his boot and sailed over Simon Mignolet’s head, that ball was not the only thing sinking in that night.

A wave around the stadium. To call it a ripple would not do it justice. “We’re Leicester City, we’re top of the league”. Swathed in originality for Leicester fans despite being sung to the tune of ‘Sloop John B’ as pretty much every football chant seems to be these days, this was more than just a song. It was recognition. It was 30,000 Leicester City fans - for perhaps the first time - realising that we have a chance.

Whilst it may be just a chance, outside of Leicester they’ll try to now claim that they always said we had a chance. The truth is that they’ve bumbled their way through 30 seconds of token Leicester City chat when theorising Van Gaal’s catastrophe and Chelsea’s capitulation, they only started to talk about N’Golo Kante two months after he was stealing more possessions than the Hatton Garden raiders and Riyad Mahrez has been robbed of Player of the Month on two occasions now. Despite 69 points in their last 32 league games, eyes have not been on Leicester City.

It irks me. It irks me to hear them talk of bubbles bursting, a ‘run’ and the same tired old wonderment being trotted out week-by-week at what is happening down at Filbert Way without being able to explain why it is so. They’d have you think it’s all inexplicable, a lucky streak.

It’s not.

What you see happening at Leicester City right now is far more than a plucky band of brothers in superhuman form (save for a Christmas party in Copenhagen). In an era when people talk about philosophies and big money signings, Leicester City fly in the face of it all.

Why? Because Leicester City have afforded themselves something that no other club seems to have these days: time.

This is a journey that started on Sunday 4^th May 2008 when, as Stoke City ascended to The Premier League for the first time in their history, Leicester City descended to the lowest point in theirs: the third tier of English football. Dark days. But that lowest ebb served as a catalyst for a re-building job that, via play-off heartbreak and a spell as Sven’s latest fling, addressed a discord between fans and players.

Every team in this league is a club but not every club in this league is a team. From top to bottom, Leicester City presents a united front and King Power Stadium has become a fortress. Leicester City fans are familiar with an “all is not lost, yet” mentality, a gallows humour and unity in difficult times. When you’ve dropped coins in a bucket outside the ground pre-match to save your club how could you not be?

Starting when the team needed the greatest of great escapes, for the past 12 months the atmosphere inside ‘The KP’ has been electric. The players feed off it, thrive on it.

Opposition teams have crumbled. When you’ve flown the 80 miles to save a ‘long’ trip on your luxury coach, walked into the ground with your designer headphones blaring and then an hour later are greeted with a thunderous noise that renders communication with your team mates nigh on impossible - and Jamie Vardy’s tearing after you - it must be hard not to. In place of ‘high press’, Leicester City do ‘hard press’.

Speaking of Vardy, ‘that’ goal is a culmination too. A culmination of a player plucked from the depths of non-league being given time. Jamie Vardy is as good as Jamie Vardy believes he is and the only opponent who can undermine his endeavour and determination sits in the centre of his mind, not of the opposition’s defence. It took time for him to realise what he could do in The Championship, time again in The Premier League and now time to believe that he is an England player. The confidence to take that shot on screamed of a man who is utterly convinced that he is as record-breakingly unstoppable as he can be.

A lot has been said about Leicester’s scouting department and the spotlight has arrived there via their greatest find, Riyad Mahrez. There’s no doubt that Mahrez has dazzled and he is undoubtedly the jewel in the crown but he has been building up to this level - gradual elevation not revelation. The only thing that should scare other teams is that he still has another couple of levels in him. The re-assuring thing for him should be that Leicester will afford him that time to find them.

They dubbed him ‘The Tinkerman’ but the only tinkering Claudio Ranieri has done is to tighten a defence that could often undermine the good work Leicester City did going forward. They now, with ease, see out games which last season went down to the wire. Even at their lowest point last season Leicester City were in every match they played and so it transpires that by addressing defensive frailties they can now win or draw games that they were marginally losing 12 months ago. Weak links last season in Wes Morgan and Danny Simpson have been men transformed this one.

It all adds up. It all culminates in a season beyond our wildest expectations but don’t let them have you believe it’s a miraculous flash in the pan or that the dream will end soon.

The dream cannot end because, little do they realise, as 30,000 rose to their feet to belt out that declaration that we were top of the league the dream had already ended. There’s a difference between dreaming and believing. We’ve all dreamt of an FA Cup, of Ranieri taking us to Europe and those more wildly optimistic amongst us of being champions of England. None of us ever believed it could happen.

We do now.

Over the next 14 matches there will be talk of losing something. Losing a chance, losing a lead, losing an opportunity. These are the kind of pressures that come with expectation so, by their very nature, for us they do not apply. There is no expectation. In a club that has experienced more in the last 20 years than some clubs do in a lifetime how could there possibly be?

But there is something that at times seemed lost within that period: hope. And with it comes that devilish little thought - again unspoken as in the moments after Vardy’s stunner - what if?

The Curious Case Of Nigel Pearson

The Curious Case Of Nigel Pearson

It was a sight that hadn’t been seen for some time. Leicester City had just secured their fourth consecutive Premier League win with a dogged and determined display in deepest Lancashire. Up at Turf Moor, Burnley, scenes of twelve months prior - when this had been a Championship title-deciding ‘six pointer’ - repeated. Rough round the edges but full of substance, Leicester were victorious.

Striding across the turf, and wearing the expression of a proud father, Nigel Pearson congratulated his players. One by one as they made their way off the field Pearson embraced them - a handshake here, a hug there, a playful headlock thrown in for good measure. It was an insight into the man, the manager, that has seldom been seen this season. And to it, to him, the players responded.

Grown men buried bashful smiles into his shoulder. Pearson is a man they are eager to please. Having tried so valiantly to do so for so much of the season, galvanized they are finally doing it.

Fast forward four days and Pearson was once again playing protector to his players. This time in a battle fought not on the pitch but instead in the pressroom.

There’s no getting away from the fact that at times this season, Pearson’s conduct has been bizarre. When the BBC’s Pat Murphy turned up armed with what he referred to as a ‘charge sheet’ the list compiled swearing at a fan, abusing a journalist and ‘that McArthur incident’.

The latest addition? Calling a reporter an ostrich.

It was the kind of incident which garnered far more attention and received far more interest because of who was involved and not what was actually said. Whilst he talked of the journalist burying his head in the sand, Pearson has already drawn his line in that same sand. The man he presents to the media is not the same man who has inspired such a remarkable upturn in Leicester’s fortunes.

Players, supporters and even members of the media testify of a Nigel Pearson disparate from the one that has presented in front of the cameras and microphones this season. Somewhere there is method in the apparent madness.

Pearson is a man of principle. A man who sets out his stall and refuses to err from it, reluctant to call a spade a shovel. At times he is resistant to the point of nausea, steadfast to the point of being surly.

Those who know him are acutely aware that there is certain terrain that Pearson will not tread in interviews. Criticism of his players is a path he will never take and those who try to lead him down it receive a sizeable dollop of disdain. At times this season the helpings have been a little too forthcoming – questions can be raised about who holds to account the father of this Leicester City family.

At first glance, Pearson’s latest indiscretion could be interpreted as an uncontrolled outburst but there is also an argument to be made that it was an overzealous effort at media management which over-stepped a line. Attempting to create a siege mentality that could ultimately see his tight-knit group of players over the line in their bid for Premier League survival, what started as something jovial turned more sinister in his attempt to launch a defence of his players as resolute as theirs at Burnley. That passion so admirable on the Turf Moor pitch suddenly so abominable in 60 seconds at the King Power Stadium.

The context to this story is wider than a Chelsea post-match press conference. Pearson has waged a war that he cannot win, even with the complete support of his players. He is taking on the media and is doing so with the assuredness of a man who is king of his empire at Leicester City.

The incident when he told a fan – the term applied loosely given that no rational supporter of The Foxes would have directed such abuse to the man who brought them back from the brink - to go to a place where a vast majority of fans would have directed him as well, first saw sympathisers. If not for what he said, for his reaction to such unwarranted abuse.

The McArthur incident, so clearly good-humoured in the first instance, was covered in a sensationalist manner so out of sorts with Pearson’s matter-of-fact style that it irked him. A mixture of stubbornness and embarrassment resulted in an attempt at face-saving that only endeavoured to make things worse. Pearson’s assertions that he could “look after himself” cast upon his character a harshness which saw a man who should be so well-respected for what he has achieved in recent years instead ridiculed.

The story rumbled on. Taking exception to a question about Leicester’s season ‘waning’ – subsequently vindicated it could be argued – Pearson replied with the colourful response of a man with total belief in his players. The press pack closed ranks and the battle lines were drawn.

In the wake of ‘Ostrich Gate’, Kasper Schmeichel spoke of a manager who: “Takes the hits necessary for the greater good.  Someone who is willing to do whatever it takes to make sure his players are ready to perform”. Were this Messrs Mourinho or Ferguson, the molehill would remain a mound. That it is Nigel Pearson, a man who refuses to pander to the media, has seen a media storm over one man calling another man at best ‘an ostrich’ and at worst ‘stupid’.

And so to the headlines the following day. Nothing about the end of Leicester City’s winning streak. Nothing about the fact that his players are still deep in the midst of a high pressure relegation battle. Nothing about the fact that Leicester city have a huge game this weekend against Newcastle United.

Taking the hits for his players to perform.

The following day also brought a visit to Pearson’s pre-match press conference from Pat Murphy, self-appointed spokesperson for the press pack. Amidst a barrage of questions intended only to rile Pearson, some of which over-stepped the line of professionalism in the same way Pearson had done just hours before, he kept his cool. Under siege he answered calmly.

Pearson may win the media battles by keeping Leicester City up but he has made numerous enemies in a media war who will be waiting for a revenge that they will be happy to devour cold. Previous incidents have already been pulled together into a collective ‘charge sheet’.

There is no doubt that a question needs to be raised about who can advise Nigel Pearson, about who can question a man who has rebuilt the club from top to bottom and earned the freedom of it. The saga that saw Pearson sacked and re-instated again within a matter of hours points to an ambiguity in the chain of command above Pearson, but it is a question that can await an answer for now.

For now, the matter at hand is Premier League survival and if Pearson’s players can keep their cool in the same way that their manager did under pressure from Murphy then Nigel Pearson will be in the glare of the Premier League spotlight for a little longer yet. Refusing to pander to a media with knives at the ready and taking those hits for those players who so clearly adore him.   

The Man In The Glass

 The Man In The Glass

Just a couple of months prior to his sacking at Southampton, in a routine interview Nigel Adkins began to recite Dale Wimbrow’s 1934 poem ‘The Man in the Glass’. The intention was to present an air of calm assuredness in response to questions about his job; the actual effect was more questions raised about his ability to cope than had been answered.

In a world where blaming others is a natural reflex, eyebrows lifted. Integrity is seldom acclaimed in the cutthroat environment of The Premier League where everyone wants a piece of you and judgement is so readily passed.

Almost two and a half years later, Adkins reflection has faded fast and struggling with his own mirror image is Nigel Pearson at Leicester City.

If much has changed for Adkins in two and half years, it could be argued that almost as much has changed in just ten months for Pearson. The confetti that smattered the streets of Leicester in celebration of a title-winning season has blown away, any champagne that remained (unlikely given that lips had waited a decade to savour the sweet taste of success) has long gone flat and everything that brought hope now delivers only despair.

There are few certainties in football but that Leicester City will be back plying their trade in The Championship next season is one, following a dismal draw at home to Hull City. Nigel Pearson is experiencing an identity crisis.

With twenty minutes remaining in an encounter Pearson himself had, with an uncharacteristic admission, termed ‘must-win’, Leicester were given a lifeline as Tom Huddlestone’s clumsiness saw him dismissed for a second bookable offence. Here were Leicester presented with a jugular that last season they would not have even required an invitation to go for.

They ambled. Pearson waited.

As 28,000 onlookers urged Pearson to seize the initiative and relent from a 5-man defence at home, the most he could venture was a winger substituted on in place for a right wingback. That the winger was Tom Lawrence - a young player of possible potential but who has only ever looked like a child amongst men in a Leicester shirt - meant that not a lot was gained. With ten minutes of the lifeline whittled away, finally came the throw of the dice as David Nugent came on for Wes Morgan (captain of the sinking ship who has been crying out for his own lifeline for the past three months).

 It beggared belief.

Everything that made Leicester great just last season – and with a 102-point campaign they were undoubtedly great - was sorely absent. In place of pace, vitality, intensity and desire, the experience that Pearson has desperately crammed into his side in the hope of salvaging something from a disastrous season looked like it didn’t have the energy to raise the tempo to one that even a poor, ten-men Hull side wouldn’t be able to resist.

Upson staggered, Schwarzer dallied and Cambiasso tired.

Outside the club shop the stars of last season (Drinkwater, Schmeichel, Morgan and Moore) are plastered imposing and eminent. Rather ironically, alongside their images a slogan of ‘#fearless’ resides. None have made a positive impact this season and none have been intrepid. But how could they now be when they are lead by a man who has become scared to lose?

The answer for Pearson as to where the blame lies for the insipid culmination to a season that promised so much does not start and end with ‘The Man in the Glass’. He understandably initially kept faith with the players who delivered success and opted to give them the opportunity that their performances last season suggested that they deserved. Until now, no team promoted with over 100 points has looked like being anywhere near close to relegation.

Perversely however, the players have rarely failed Pearson or betrayed his trust. Leicester are yet to take one of the thrashings that seem to come with the territory of being The Premier League’s basement boys. They have been in almost every game they have played but, time and again, they have come up short through a lack of quality or simple, unforeseen individual errors.

January provided a second chance to rectify a lack of recruitment. In keeping with what has happened on the pitch, it was another chance missed. When Leicester needed players coming in as soon as the window opened, it was creaking shut as they did their most crucial business. Even as the latch clicked, the feeling was that not enough had been incoming to cover frailties exposed by unforgiving opponents up until the turn of the year.

Pearson has, on too many occasions, failed his players. After the euphoria of the 5-3 victory over Manchester United – a straw that has become tattered from the frequency with which it has been clutched at by Leicester fans – he tried to become too astute. Leicester were set-up to counter their opposition rather than to stay true to everything that had got them to the top of that cloud on which they sat as Leonardo Ulloa stroked home the fifth against United.

At times this meant that Riyad Mahrez, a gem of player who will undoubtedly grace the upper echelons of European football next season even if Leicester City do not, was inexplicably omitted despite being the team’s main creative outlet. At other times the absence of Marc Albrighton and Anthony Knockaert has proved just as bewildering as the ever-presence of Wes Morgan whilst Leicester’s best defender this season Marcin Wasilewski sits on the bench.

Away from the football field, some of the decisions Pearson has taken have been bizarre. There was the incident where he swore at a fan which, whilst somewhat deserved, showed a lack of composure and self-control in testing times. Next there was the infamous McArthur incident which clearly started as a joke but then distorted into something more both in terms of how it was perceived by the player himself and in which it was then reported by the media (not helped by Pearson’s face-saving attempts). Finally, we have arrived at a post-match press conference in which Pearson has sworn at a journalist for pernickety questions – yet again allied with the territory.

In the intense, scrutiny-filled world of The Premier League, Pearson has seemingly failed to acknowledge that the judgemental eyes cast over him are more than just those staring back at him in the mirror.

Away from the camera and microphones those who know him speak of a likeable, jovial man. Those holding them experience a different person and his conduct has belied the gracious, considered, assured persona of last season. Better managers have belligerently taken on the press pack and it is simply an additional battle that Pearson shouldn’t need this season and yet another that he will not win.

There is an air of resignation about Nigel Pearson currently. The figure he cuts is of a man eroded by the pressure of a nightmare first season managing in The Premier League and, with that, a careless abandon of a man answerable only to himself. Unfortunately for him, questions will soon be demanded by both the Leicester fans and Thai owners who have shown a commendable and admirable patience this season in an era when managerial changes occur with the transient weather.

Despite being in many ways old-fashioned – one suspects that the lack of recruitment in January may have been due to his reluctance to pander to the whims of modern players and agents - Nigel Pearson is a progressive manager. The scouting set-up and performance analysis team that accompanies him everywhere he goes is testament to that and Pearson is open to learning (see his positioning of himself in the stand for the majority of both this season and last). With every difficulty he has faced at Leicester, he has overcome adversity and learned, making the changes necessary to allow the team to be a success.

 

There is no doubt that Pearson will learn his biggest lesson from this season. Given time to step back and evaluate everything that has gone before he will become a better manager (and this season has not made him a bad one). Whether that is for the benefit of Leicester City or another club remains to be seen - time and patience at The King Power Stadium is wearing thin. One thing that is however for sure is that that lesson has to begin with the man in the mirror.

In the confines of his own home, if Nigel Pearson were to honestly evaluate the man staring back at himself currently, he may find that the very guy looking back towards him has deviated so far from what he once was that he now resembles foe rather than friend. And, as Wimbrow wrote, it is that man’s judgement that he must satisfy first.

For it isn't your Father, or Mother, or Wife,

Who judgement upon you must pass.

The feller whose verdict counts most in your life

Is the guy staring back from the glass.

He's the feller to please, never mind all the rest,

For he's with you clear up to the end,

And you've passed your most dangerous, difficult test

If the guy in the glass is your friend.

(Extract from ‘The Man in the Glass’ by Dale Wimbrow, 1934)