Trigger Happy TV

Trigger Happy TV

Jamie Barnard on how defeat at Derby County could spell the end for Nigel Pearson at Leicester City...

The world will not be watching, but who is watching may mean the world. This weekend Nigel Pearson takes his faltering Leicester City side to local rivals Derby County in a match televised live on Sky. Halfway across the globe, Leicester City’s Thai owners, the newly-named Srivaddhanaprabhas, are sure to be watching.

With just one win in nine matches, Pearson has gone from marvelled man as Manager of the Month in January to a marked man as Leicester have plummeted from automatic promotion hopefuls to the blundering hopeless. A 'crisis of confidence' it has been termed by Pearson himself. Leicester City are aiming high, shooting low.

And so the targets have shifted. From gunning for automatic promotion to familiar play-off terrain last encountered in a fateful, fatal Cardiff shoot-out - Leicester City would now take a shot at the play-offs. But talking of shots, the Leicester City firing squad have their sight transposed from Premiership riches to the man they have tasked with getting them there.

Defeat at Derby could give them all of the ammunition they need and it is clear to see that Nigel Pearson is in the line of fire.

For Pearson though, such conjecture is nothing novel. In an unpredictable environment where the lone consistency is found in the uncertainty of his job security, Pearson has endured speculation over his future already this season. Back in October, on a cold, swirling Tuesday night, Leicester travelled to Huddersfield Town with speculation rife that Harry Redknapp had been talking to Leicester City’s owners about replacing Pearson. What followed was an ethereal team display, illuminated by two divine strikes by Anthony Knockaert, maintaining a run which eventually sent Leicester to the top of the Championship table for the first time in nine years.

Back then the youthful exuberance in which his team was swathed seemed to their advantage. Arrogance personified in the joie de vivre of Knockaert saw teams dispatched with ease; Huddersfield Town, no doubt sick of the sight of him, were dispatched 6-1 and with Ipswich Town they would later find parity as they too were hit for six as they left the East Midlands with nothing. Now, in the shards of confidence which has littered recent performances against Sheffield Wednesday and Leeds United, such vitality has turned to naivety.

Pearson is the father figure.

 

Expectation at Leicester City is high these days, but when asked recently about the pressures of leading Leicester in a promotion push in the final season before Financial Fair Play regulations may restrict the club’s ability to invest in playing staff, Pearson responded: "I don't feel the pressure at all, people keep trying to ramp things up, it remains the same situation that it was in July and August."

His calm assuredness would have you believe he were bulletproof.

But at the end of week in which Reading so callously sacked their manager Brian McDermott, it is worth questioning the value in Pearson agonizing. The precedent has been set. The blueprint thumbed so many times by impatient foreign owners rifling through its pages that it is worn and tattered; stagnating club lead to The Premier League, re-invigorated, before the very manager who lead them there is then cast aside. Before McDermott there was Adkins, and before him there was Warnock.

For a country which bemoans the lack of English candidates every time the national football team flounders on foreign shores at a major tournament, and subsequently searches for a successor to the national team manager, the column inches and coverage given to the departures of men, Englishmen, such as Adkins and McDermott is grossly disproportionate. Of international calibre they may not yet be, of potential both are plentiful.

Over the last decade, every football columnist in the country has at one point theorised of David Moyes as a possible candidate for the Manchester United job when it becomes available. He may never reach those upper echelons of football management but commended is the job he has done at Goodison Park. Given time, having plied his trade at a so-called ‘lesser club’, Moyes has been afforded the patience and opportunity at Everton that Adkins and McDermott never were at their respective clubs.

McDermott; the man who took Reading to the quarter-finals of the FA Cup for the first time in 83 years, League Managers Association Championship Manager of the Year 2012, an impressive win ratio of 44.97%. Adkins; the first ever Southampton manager to gain back-to-back promotions, a win ratio of 51%. Seemingly of their own success they have both become victims.

The win ratio of that man who will be staring down the barrel at Pride Park this weekend? Pearson has a win ratio of 44.16%.

Earlier this season, faced with a comparable question to that asked of Pearson, when quizzed how he dealt with stress Southampton manager Nigel Adkins recited ‘The Guy in The Glass’ by Dale Wimbrow, an ode centred on being answerable to yourself and your own decisions. The opening line of that poem is: “When you get what you want in your struggle for pelf”.

It may well be that the owners of Reading and Southampton achieve their pelf, Pearson may join Adkins and McDermott as a spent round, and Leicester’s Thai owners may find theirs. But what should he care when, should he take Leicester to the 'the promised land', it is probable that promises of support and loyalty to him by Leiceser City's owners may be shattered at the first sign of strife?

If English football is to ameliorate then the indifference to such firings has to change. In the fickle world of football memorable men are quickly forgotten. A minute’s applause here, a banner there. Only should the foundations laid by such men not be built upon will the facets of nostalgia unearth a belated protestation.

 

Hindsight is one of football’s closest companions.

Should Pearson’s side be firing blanks in Derby this weekend there are those who will argue that there is scope for him to be dismissed. Promising form and performances by a rejuvenated Leicester City prior to his announcement as Manager of the Month in January  provides the counter claim. But that such a decision would be harsh on the man who has given Leicester their greatest prospect of a return to The Premiership since, well, his last spell at the club, is indisputable.

   

However in an era that considers foregone achievers such as Adkins, Warnock and McDermott dispensable there is just one thing beyond any doubt. For Leicester City’s Nigel Pearson, it’s time to bite the bullet.