Should we be grateful our club has stability in the managerial position?

By: Martyn | July 14th, 2008

After another summer of pots of antagonism brewing between fans and management, and Dave Jones’s reprieve from his beleaguered chairman during the course of last season, are we right to persist with the same man through thin and thin (and the rare spot of thick)? One team recently relegated from the Championship certainly found that chopping n’ changing didn’t lead to anything at the end at the rainbow, let alone a pot of gold.

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Leicester City are currently preparing to start a fate they have never previously experienced: Life in the unfamiliar territory of England’s third division. As has become common for the club originally known as Leicester Fosse, the season will commence with yet another manager in charge. The mugshot in the papers this time is that of recently discharged Southampton boss and renowned coach Nigel Pearson. With so many managerial changes and the recent financial insecurities surrounding the club, will this finally be the season the phoenix is reborn from the ashes?

When discussing the East Midlands club, it is easiest to begin with the farcical managerial situations. No less than 5 managerial teams were given the magnanimous task of barking instructions from the touchline during the course of last season, and since the heady days of Martin O’ Neill no less than 13 management ensembles have trudged their way down the hazardous managerial path of the ex-Filbert Street residents. Some of the appointments did seem exceptional fits: Martin Allen and Ian Holloway were managers with excellent track records at lesser clubs in the lower leagues and it was commendable to grant both the deserved opportunity. As the bald Bristolian eloquently put it, such a break for man like he was akin to an actor playing the role of King Lear. That unexpectedly proved to be a very apt and poignant comparison. Regrettably, no one saw fit to inform Ollie that poor old Lear ends up choking it.

With such instability in the position where stability should prevail, how does Mandaric expect the lemons to turn themselves into lemonade? How can a team hope to consolidate solidarity, motivation, direction, trust, respect or job and first team security when the bloke in charge is either walking a tightrope, not publicly backed by the chief bean counter, or having just been installed into the job with the weight of expectation on his back and limited experience? Such insecurity is contagious and filters its way down to the fans that religiously plough their way through the turnstiles. Only sadists would pay to turn up and watch a ship set sail with a gaping puncture in the underside, but such sadists are worthy of reward.

Surely Mandaric now comprehends adopting a trigger-happy manner when it comes to pushing the ‘Blame & Fire Manager’ button is not the way forward for the club. It’s as if the ex-Pompey helmsman gives each impressive interviewee a loaded gun, tells them to spray lead in a crowded room with the lights off, and then gives them the sack as soon as an accident occurs. Mandaric, you see, is awaiting the messiah; somebody that can navigate the treacherous minefield. The One. Rather like Morpheus seeking out Neo in the Matrix trilogy. Except that in the case of the Foxes, The One will be the lucky sod with the four-leaf clover and rabbit’s foot. The One will sail the ship with the gaping hole in the bottom onto shallow waters, and thus, it will remain steady! Blind luck will ultimately be the lucky manager’s redeeming characteristic, however temporary it may be.

They say you make your own luck however, so is Nigel Pearson The One?

What of his track record? Here we have a man who has been caretaker manager so many times that some may mistakenly believe he’s little more than a janitor. Always the excited fiancée but never quite the ecstatic post-honeymoon bride. Nevertheless, his two brief forays into managerial marriage can both be considered job’s well done should one attempt to superficially surmise. He saved moribund, demotion-destined campaigns for both Carlisle and Southampton. These two spells were practically a decade apart, so clearly, Pearson can adapt to the rapidly progressing waves of time that football rides. Conceivably, Pearson is a lucky manager too. After all, this is the man who signed Jimmy Glass on loan during his spell in charge at the Cumbrian club. Glass was the goalkeeper who scored in injury time on the final day of the season to keep Carlisle in the league and prevent relegation to the Vauxhall Conference. Correspondingly, Pearson achieved 7 draws in his spell in charge at the Saints, several of which were games that could so easily have ended up in the column gravely marked ‘L’. Pearson’s remuneration for keeping Saints from an unthinkable demotion: everyone’s least favourite item of footwear: the boot!

Hence how Pearson finds himself with the task of putting together again the Leicestershire version of Humpty Dumpty. Should the astute coaching fox struggle to steer The Foxes in their opening 8 League One games (MK Dons, Stockport, Tranmere, Cheltenham, Colchester, Milwall, Leyton Orient and Hartlepool), you can imagine a certain Serbian septuagenarian barking orders at hapless blonde secretaries, stomping around his lavish office with a face shade somewhere between pickled beetroot and ACF Fiorentina home strip, and vowing that never again during his tenure will Pearson be behind the wheel. Indubitably these are all games that a prestigious and celebrated team such as Leicester City plainly must win if they require an immediate reprieve from a sentence that includes Football League Trophy participation! Irrelevant history and old-boy backslapping aside mind, one of the league’s better squads just has to emerge from these encounters dragging 8 freshly severed scalps in their wake. So be it for brushing the sleep out of your eyes before you wholly wake up, these games won’t come along in the season again. Pearson has to rack up between 18 – 24 points or face immediate hot breath on his collar, negatively subliminal and saturating newspaper ink, sleepless nights, and a P45 being readied to coincide with the next unfortunate result he resides over.

Thus far, Leicester’s transfer operations have been modest (Bulgarian big ones aside). Yet in all honesty, business has been laudably shrewd given the tentative circumstances. Young, sprightly, and hungry acquisitions from clubs such as Bury, MK Dons and Cambridge United highlight that the club in all probability has one of the superior scouting systems in this division when it comes to sniffing out lower-league talent. Indeed, you’d like to think such a system was initiated and taken very seriously after the club entered administration shortly after the collapse of ITV Digital. Perchance, it will now bloom resplendently and help save the club from further despondency. They can’t rely on Gary Lineker led consortiums forever, y’know. Unlike some in this division who have tried to buy their way out, teams that have ridden the elevator upwards recently include Colchester, Scunthorpe, Southend, Blackpool and Doncaster Rovers. Clearly then, it’s team-spirit, a tight budget but an ever tighter team unit, momentum, and appreciative chairmen that are key to locating the stairway to Championship Heaven. Swansea City is a notable exception to the aforementioned logic as they have spent Benjamin Franklin’s in a grandiose, hedonistic and slapdash manner. Admittedly however, chairman Huw Jenkins didn’t cough up for the entire squad that took them up in the course of a summer, as the large spending came over a period of 36 months and illustrated that hedonism can eventually get you what want. But teams instantaneously shooting skywards from this level after splashing the cash loosely are anomalies. Therefore, it only goes to show that in this league perhaps even more so than the ones directly below and above it, you must have your fair share of horses to complement and assist the knights. That in mind, Leicester City simply must continue to stay sensible in the market if they are to have any hope of imminent progression, as well as granting King Nigel “Arthur” Pearson time to get accustomed to and comfy at the Round Table.

Milan Mandaric is not the triumphant football chemist that he likes to think he is. He follows the blame-culture inculcated hire-and-fire ‘em formula that has been tried, tested, elongated and 9-times-outta-10 failed by Italian chairmen of clubs in the lower reaches of Serie A. Such powerful, twitchy commanders are renegades to the League Manager’s Association and their clients, but it’s almost as if they believe that what they do will justify them as a man of the people. The second their new beloved club falters: Why… Goodness gracious. Heads must roll. At once! It’s transparently last month’s Sir Matt Busby II fault entirely. On the flip side: Should he succeed, invite him and the wife over for a raclette and tell every hack that’ll listen that you knew it would work out just as splendidly as it has done. After all, it was [insert name here] that’d you been stalking and keeping tabs on all along! Piteously, I consider this is the protocol the computer components tycoon and former St. Louis Storm owner will continue to follow at the beleaguered Foxes, and as a result, that phoenix will have to delay its flight for the next season or two. Should Big Nige cling to any hope of holding onto his present role for more than a few pages on his desk calendar, maybe he had better dig out his phonebook and look under ‘G’ for a certain goal-scoring goalkeeper! Jimmy Glass wouldn’t do any worse than the club’s misfiring strikers!