Warnock deserves more credit than just being known as 1972 Hartlepool Player of the Year
AT the end of Manchester City’s FA Cup win at the Cardiff City Stadium in January, Pep Guardiola – incensed by Joe Bennett’s horrible assault on Leroy Sane – dashed on to the field and gave referee Lee Mason both barrels.
At length, in spectacular fingerpointing fashion.
For anyone else, it would have been a transgression to catch the attention of the FA.
For Neil Warnock, it would have been book-throwing time, and another stick to beat him with.
For Pep, it was blind-eye and deaf-ear time.
For the sort of football his team plays, Guardiola is cut an awful lot of slack. No one cuts Warnock any slack. Few seem to like him.
He does not appear overly popular within the managerial fraternity and, even though he has earned seven promotions, never wins awards.
On his Wikipedia page, there are two ‘honours’ listed. Hartlepool United Player of the Year, 1971-72, and BBC London Sports Personality of the Year, 2011. If his Cardiff City side maintains its current form and is promoted to the Premier League, he should be odds-on to be named Manager of the Year, ahead of Guardiola. For taking Reading up in 2006, Steve Coppell was given that particular accolade. What Warnock is doing in his umpteenth job is truly remarkable. When he took over from Paul Trollope in October 2016, Cardiff were two points off the bottom of the Championship table. Their win over Burton two days ago was their eighth on the spin – their best run of form in 25 years – and they are seven points clear of third-placed Fulham with a game in hand. If there is anyone punching above their weight in Cardiff, it is Warnock. Yet his acumen is perennially under-acclaimed. Think of the job he did in his short spell at Rotherham, arriving in February, 2016, with the club seemingly doomed to relegation and saving them with relative comfort.
He never misses a chance to remind you of it, but Warnock is a manager who can get the job done without extravagant spending and without an extravagant wage bill. His net spend at Cardiff is a little over £1million.
In Championship terms, the likes of Aston Villa and Wolves are financial giants, but Warnock is not just looking at the prospect of promotion, he has a chance of pipping Wolves to the title itself.
Warnock, who will turn 70 in December, has done it so many times that promotion will not surprise anyone. Instead, focus will probably turn to his indifferent record in the Premier League.
But there were mitigating factors for his struggles at the highest level with Sheffield United and Queens Park Rangers, in particular. He remains bitter over the Blades’ relegation and the Carlos Tevez affair. And when he was sacked by QPR in January of the 2011-12 season, his team had not yet been in the relegation zone. Those setbacks have still been enough for Warnock to be pigeonholed as a Championship specialist. It is not a tag that bothers him. Not much seems to bother Neil Warnock. Ruminating about his mortality, he suggested fans, rather than holding a minute’s silence or applause, might sing ‘Warnock is a w ***** ’ on a loop. Within the game, there would probably be plenty of takers for that. But if anyone deserves one last crack at the Premier League, a final hurrah crossing swords with Pep Guardiola, it is Warnock.