Bully for you
Nigel Pearson confounds the sceptics
No one will ever know what possessed Nigel Pearson to issue his infamous slur on flightless birds, deriding a journalist at Leicester City as an “ostrich”. But a little-known postscript to this incident is that the next day the club chef offered up ostrich burgers as his daily special.
And that 20 of Pearson’s staff arrived at work wearing black T-shirts with pictures of ostriches on the front.
Set against the manager’s caricature as a stern sergeant major, whose public persona is at best an acquired taste, these details come as quite a jolt.
“We would never have done it if we weren’t sure that Nige would take the joke for that mini-fiasco upon himself,” says Ken Way, the former Leicester psychologist and one of those involved in the send-up. “None of us asked, ‘Is this a good idea?’ He’s a very funny guy. I see some of his interviews on TV, and they’re at odds with the person I know.
“For example, he’s a real cartoonist on the quiet. Often you would go into the office and find a pocket cartoon pinned above your desk.”
At Watford, where he has been given another precious chance in the Premier League, it is Pearson’s challenge to showcase the softer side of his nature to a wider audience.
During his second, tempestuous spell at Leicester, there were too many moments that gave rise to perceptions of a tyrant: calling a reporter a “p---k” for posing a question to which he took exception, telling a supporter to “f--off and die”, and one bizarre touchline incident in which he appeared to throttle Crystal Palace’s James McArthur.
So far, Pearson has seized his platform for reinvention, propelling Watford to three wins in their past four league games and offering a reminder that he belongs at this level.
In 2015, the last time he managed in the top flight, he laughed in the face of relegation talk, leading Leicester from bottom of the table at Christmas to 14th by May, laying the platform for the Premier League’s greatest miracle the next season. His regret is that he never stayed long enough for his role to be appreciated, with Leicester’s board deciding that his all-toofrequent PR gaffes rendered him a liability.
Way, who went on to play a part in Leicester’s title-winning campaign, argues that Pearson has been unfairly airbrushed from the record. “Nige just never received credit for what he achieved,” he says. “You have to remember that, back in 2009, he had taken the club to win League One by seven points. Then, in 2014, they won the Championship by nine. He also created the culture and team spirit that led to them winning the Premier League. And yet he has all but disappeared from history.”
Under the remorseless scrutiny of the Premier League, Pearson sometimes did not help his own image. He could be needlessly belligerent with journalists, while trying too hard to burnish his tough-guy credentials, not least when regaling the story of how he had outrun a pack of wild dogs in the Carpathian Mountains. “He fits the mould of ‘what you see is what you get’,” Way explains. “It can lead to a mismatch between the public persona and what the Watford team will be experiencing. That will be seeing a caring, considerate side to his character that you just don’t pick up from outside.”
Pearson, a fearsome centre-back in his day for Sheffield Wednesday and Middlesbrough, endured a tough baptism into the coaching life. When he started out at Carlisle in the late Nineties, his assistant, John Halpin, would have to ring around local playing fields just to make sure the team had somewhere to train. Although he had harboured a childhood ambition to join the Royal Air Force, he quickly found his metier in the more regimental aspects of management. But for all Pearson has been portrayed as a man of iron, Way, who has worked for him at Leicester, Southampton and Hull, suggests that the 56-year-old’s most effective attribute is a soft touch.
“What he is so good at is building relationships. Sure, he has a very demanding style, but so long as you are doing your utmost to improve your performance, he is very warm and caring towards you. The real key to what’s going on at Watford now is that Nigel and Craig Shakespeare are building, just as at their previous clubs, a culture that demands the very best from everyone. The bottom line is that he cares about the players and staff. That means you go the extra mile to please him.”
While Watford’s appointment of Pearson last month might have looked a gamble, given he had spent much of the past two years in the boondocks of Belgium’s second tier, his qualities are far from forgotten.
Riyad Mahrez, no less, thanked him for his influence on shaping Leicester into the force they subsequently became, the Algerian noting how Pearson had personally assisted in improving his English when he first arrived from Le Havre.
Pearson, for his part, insists that he has absorbed the lessons from his past misjudgments, but indicates that he will stay true to himself.
“Authenticity,” he said, when asked to name the most important virtue in a dressing room. As Watford seek to sustain their revival at Bournemouth today, Way is in little doubt that Pearson’s message is resonating with the players. “You can see that they seem galvanised, to an extent that we don’t normally with a change of manager. There was a lovely quote from Christian Fuchs at Leicester: ‘We were just friends, having fun on the pitch.’ I can detect the essence of that already at Watford.”
‘He fits the mould of what you see is what you get. It can lead to mismatch between the man and the public persona’
‘He cares about the players and the staff, so they go the extra mile to please him’