Nigel Pearson working for KP again

[Rogstanley]

5 minutes ago, inckley fox said:

I'm never sure what people mean by a good tactical brain. Surely it just means playing the right system to get a result, by which measure Pearson did fine. My appreciation of the complexities of tactics isn't strong enough to judge a manager's merits in this area, and when pundits try to point out a stroke of tactical brilliance it often doesn't seem to be anything exceptional. It's easier for fans to judge things on outcomes than it is on the high-level stuff, which plenty of ex-players and a good few managers don't seem to be too clear on either.

 

He certainly wasn't one-dimensional. He had a very different style of play in his first stint to his second on account of the better resources available to him. He switched systems quite frequently, sometimes to great effect (e.g. the 3-5-2 in 2015). I wonder whether people see him as a quite brutish, old-school Englishman and therefore not the sort of bespectacled foreign scholar who we tend to see as a tactician.

 

I know Mahrez praised the tactical improvement after Ranieri replaced Pearson, but plenty of others have questioned how good an organiser or match-prep manager Claudio was. Equally, we've seen plenty of managers who were supposed to be very tactically astute, but who aren't very good at winning matches. Pleat, Taylor, Levein, Sousa, Eriksson and Puel were all supposed tacticians. O'Neill, Adams and Pearson weren't.

He was found wanting tactically in the premier league. You recall him switching systems quite frequently, sometimes to great effect. I recall his systems failing one after another and his frequent changes looking increasingly desperate, and at times bizarre (his infamous diamond is never to be forgotten). His final switch to the 352 and a no holds barred approach seemed less like a decision based on tactical competence and more like he just picked it out of a hat and hoped it would work better than all the others. Otherwise, why on earth didn't he do it earlier? We'd have probably won the league that year too.

[inckley fox]

1 minute ago, Rogstanley said:

He was found wanting tactically in the premier league. You recall him switching systems quite frequently, sometimes to great effect. I recall his systems failing one after another and his frequent changes looking increasingly desperate, and at times bizarre (his infamous diamond is never to be forgotten). His final switch to the 352 and a no holds barred approach seemed less like a decision based on tactical competence and more like he just picked it out of a hat and hoped it would work better than all the others. Otherwise, why on earth didn't he do it earlier? We'd have probably won the league that year too.

If you don't consider Pearson to be a tactician because he tried lots of different formations when he was losing games, until he started winning games, then I can only assume that your master tacticians never change tactics when they're losing and swap systems every week when things are going well.

 

He'd tried the 3-5-2 before. He played it at the beginning of the 2013-14 season, and then in early 2015 he played a 5-4-1 / 3-4-2-1 system which evolved into a 3-4-1-2 after the Man City game, if I remember correctly. The unsuccessful diamond you talk about was the same system played by great tacticians like Sven in his final season and, on one occasion, Ranieri in his final season. It didn't work for them either, admittedly, but it did work once for Pearson, when we beat United 5-3.

 

And the end result of all this was a very impressive 14th place finish. If you look through the media's reporting of Leicester during this period, you'll find lots of credit for Pearson's tactics, including when we were losing. For instance when Arsene Wenger unexpectedly declared that Leicester would definitely stay up, and that they had a fine manager in charge, even though we'd just lost yet another game and been cut further adrift. We played 5-4-1 that day too.

 

So I don't see any need to over-state how terrible things were when we were losing games, nor to suggest that Pearson came up short in the top flight, or that his tactically sound decisions were just accidents. I'm not arguing that he was a tactical master-class - I'm not expert enough to distinguish what makes one manager tactically more astute than another, other than by outcomes - but then again most of our best managers were meant to be questionable tacticians. Most of our worst managers were meant to be superb.

[urban.spaceman]

2 hours ago, Sharpe's Fox said:

After thinking about it I think my favorite Nige was ‘Bearded Derby Nige’

 

 

Although early days Nige when he was rocking the sweatshirt rather than the tracksuit will always have a place in my heart

 

If he comes back we HAVE to insist on a beard.

[Hirsty The Blue 94]

Pearson or someone like Pearson are needed for both the short and long term. If you look at it this job is similar to the job that Nigel came in and did in his 2nd spell here. albeit in the division above. Then we had a squad of some talent, but no direction, no leaders and players on big money hardly lifting a leg and us being in the mid to bottom half of the table/ That is the direction we are going in now. When he came back in, he didn't in January quickly turn over 10 players for a quick fix. He added a couple of key additions (Morgan & Drinkwater) and slowly built the team and spirit season on season as we continued to improve. 

 

For the short term the next 12-18 months we need to just get that team spirit back, the desire for players to play for each other, the manager & the fans which has been non existent this season. I think it would be dangerous to say that we should just try and replace half the squad. Alot of teams that have a big turnover of players usually end up struggling the following year, at least for the start until all the players have gelled with one another, adapted to a new league etc. Look at our recent signings of the last 2 years how many have slotted straight into the team and hit the ground running, I can think of N'didi & Maguire and even he was dodgy for the first 10 games. That might mean that Fuchs, Morgan etc hang about another year, and though they seem to have regressed slighty this year it will be amazing what some actual directions & tactics as well as the threat of a big white trainer up your arse can do for your performance.

 

Then in the long term we do need to phase out the old guard, but slowly rather than all in one go, slowly try and at least make us have the ability to play in more than 1 way, go back to bringing in players who will develop at their time at the club and could easily be sold for 20 times their original price. It's a fair argument to say we should be looking forwards not backwards, but we need potentially take a couple of steps backwards to take us 3 steps forward to have a squad capable of sustaining the ability to be 'best of the rest.'

 

So with all that in mind I think Nigel would do a very good job here in getting us back on the path that he put us on before he left. I'm sure there are other managers who are capable of it, but I'm not sure our owners and definitely that clown Rudkin are trusted to pick them out. so instead stick with what you know and bring home Nigel.

[Leeds Fox]

38 minutes ago, Rogstanley said:

He was found wanting tactically in the premier league. You recall him switching systems quite frequently, sometimes to great effect. I recall his systems failing one after another and his frequent changes looking increasingly desperate, and at times bizarre (his infamous diamond is never to be forgotten). His final switch to the 352 and a no holds barred approach seemed less like a decision based on tactical competence and more like he just picked it out of a hat and hoped it would work better than all the others. Otherwise, why on earth didn't he do it earlier? We'd have probably won the league that year too.

 

He’s a stubborn man but not one naive enough to fall on his sword in terms of football. He was willing to admit that one wasn’t working and changed it. Most of his formations and game-plans didn’t really work and we were running out of time so rather than stick with a loser he gambled and tried almost everything. 

 

The 3-5-2 went against his philosophy of keeping us in games (we didn’t get a real thumping that season) and threw everything we had on the roll of a dice. We were going down and that formation could have seen us get battered in the last dozen games. It didn’t, it worked. It’s a formation that had he played from the off could have gone horribly wrong but it was one to be played when we had nothing to lose. 

 

Had we stayed up playing safe football like we’d seen all season, we wouldn’t have found the style (albeit a different formation) that saw us win the Premier League, I have no doubt about that. 

Edited 8 May 2018 by Leeds Fox

[dylanlegend]

 

[Cincinnati Fox]

Come home! I adore the man.

 

Edited 9 May 2018 by Everygamefox

[RumbleFox]

9 hours ago, Rogstanley said:

He was found wanting tactically in the premier league. You recall him switching systems quite frequently, sometimes to great effect. I recall his systems failing one after another and his frequent changes looking increasingly desperate, and at times bizarre (his infamous diamond is never to be forgotten). His final switch to the 352 and a no holds barred approach seemed less like a decision based on tactical competence and more like he just picked it out of a hat and hoped it would work better than all the others. Otherwise, why on earth didn't he do it earlier? We'd have probably won the league that year too.

You do realise it was his first ever season in the league?  Even the mighty Pep struggled in his first season (relatively).  To say he got found out is just incorrect.  He struggled with the step up and it took a while to get it right but you don't fluke 9 wins in a row in the Premier League.  Moreover I watched every single game that season and we maybe looked bad once.  I know this is a results business but anyone watching those games could see we were almost there.  People can pick out one or two bad decisions from anyone's career and highlight them to illustrate their own pre-held beliefs but Pearson's overall record, including in the Premier League, stands up with any manager we have ever had.

 

X

Edited 9 May 2018 by RumbleFox

[Rogstanley]

51 minutes ago, RumbleFox said:

You do realise it was his first ever season in the league?  Even the mighty Pep struggled in his first season (relatively).  To say he got found out is just incorrect.  He struggled with the step up and it took a while to get it right but you don't fluke 9 wins in a row in the Premier League.  Moreover I watched every single game that season and we maybe looked bad once.  I know this is a results business but anyone watching those games could see we were almost there.  People can pick out one or two bad decisions from anyone's career and highlight them to illustrate their own pre-held beliefs but Pearson's overall record, including in the Premier League, stands up with any manager we have ever had.

 

X

 

I said he was found wanting and he was, that's why we were bottom of the league for 8 months or whatever it was.

 

The argument about games being close gets trotted out a lot, but we lost most of them for a reason. We sat back and tried 'not to lose' and in doing so never lost too badly, but we were also never really in with a chance of winning so the close results don't tell the whole story.

 

It wasn't one or two bad decisions, it was several months worth. You're playing down how bad we were for most of that season which I reckon must have something to do with your own "pre-held beliefs" don't you. 

 

We didn't win 9 in a row but we did have a very good run of 7 wins in 9 against some mid-table teams who were arguably "on the beach" and a couple of already relegated sides but nevertheless credit is due to him for finally discovering a system that worked. If he knew it was going to work he'd have done it much earlier instead of wasting months going through a array of different systems, which is how we know there was a fair bit of "try everything and hope something works" involved.

 

I love Pearson and have even said I'd take him back if he came back with Shakey and Walsh so there's certainly no animosity toward the man from me. But that doesn't mean I'm just going to forget how much of a tactical mess he was regardless of how nice and convenient it would be to do so.

Edited 9 May 2018 by Rogstanley

[Long Eaton Fox]

Nigel Pearson

 

1  Got us promoted from league 1

 

2  Got us promoted from the Championship

 

3  The great escape from relegation

 

4  And most importantly it was his team that won us the Premier league

 

5  He has never been sacked for football reasons

 

6  And yes I voted yes in the poll

[Sol thewall Bamba]

1 hour ago, Everygamefox said:

Come home! I adore the man.

 

 

Look how crisp and fresh those trainers are. 

[funkyrobot]

2 hours ago, Sol thewall Bamba said:

Look how crisp and fresh those trainers are. 

Plus the standard buzz cut, plus new ‘continental’ specs. It’s the stuff dreams are made of. 

[ScouseFox]

those legs

[coolhandfox]

12 hours ago, inckley fox said:

I'm never sure what people mean by a good tactical brain. Surely it just means playing the right system to get a result, by which measure Pearson did fine Took him 30 games of the PL great escape season to try 3 centre-half's and wing backs, when it was clear that we were shipping to many goals. Struggled to get the best out of Vardy and Mahrez, under used Albrighton until the system change.  My appreciation of the complexities of tactics isn't strong enough to judge a manager's merits in this area, and when pundits try to point out a stroke of tactical brilliance it often doesn't seem to be anything exceptional. It's easier for fans to judge things on outcomes than it is on the high-level stuff, which plenty of ex-players and a good few managers don't seem to be too clear on either. I've been involved in managing/coaching local football teams for 20 years, so tactics interest me a lot.

 

He certainly wasn't one-dimensional. No but it took him a lot of time to change, in my option you should be fluid and flexible, he wasn't great at making in game changes to effect the out come of the game. He had a very different style of play in his first stint to his second on account of the better resources available to him. He switched systems quite frequently, sometimes to great effect (e.g. the 3-5-2 in 2015). I wonder whether people see him as a quite brutish, old-school Englishman and therefore not the sort of bespectacled foreign scholar who we tend to see as a tactician. I see him as a very good man manager, motivator.  

 

I know Mahrez praised the tactical improvement after Ranieri replaced Pearson, but plenty of others have questioned how good an organiser or match-prep manager Claudio was. Equally, we've seen plenty of managers who were supposed to be very tactically astute, but who aren't very good at winning matches. Pleat, Taylor, Levein, Sousa, Eriksson and Puel were all supposed tacticians. O'Neill, Adams and Pearson weren't. Pleat, Taylor Levein, weren't Tactical astute for me, Sousa not long enough to comment, Eriksson right manager, wrong time, more suit to managing in the PL than the championship. 

 

See comments above, I just think to go back to a manager for the 3 time is unnecessary unless they where brilliant, NP was good but never brilliant. He deserve a lot of credit for sort the club out twice, once after relegation to league 1 and when he came back the second time in the Championship. However both times he had the benefit of of having the one of the biggest budget in the league. 

 

He was average in the great escape season, and didn't deserve the sack for football reasons, and then went on to do poorly at Derby.

 

Could you see any of the other PL teams appointing him?

 

 

 

[RumbleFox]

3 hours ago, Rogstanley said:

I said he was found wanting and he was, that's why we were bottom of the league for 8 months or whatever it was.

 

The argument about games being close gets trotted out a lot, but we lost most of them for a reason. We sat back and tried 'not to lose' and in doing so never lost too badly, but we were also never really in with a chance of winning so the close results don't tell the whole story.

 

It wasn't one or two bad decisions, it was several months worth. You're playing down how bad we were for most of that season which I reckon must have something to do with your own "pre-held beliefs" don't you. 

 

We didn't win 9 in a row but we did have a very good run of 7 wins in 9 against some mid-table teams who were arguably "on the beach" and a couple of already relegated sides but nevertheless credit is due to him for finally discovering a system that worked. If he knew it was going to work he'd have done it much earlier instead of wasting months going through a array of different systems, which is how we know there was a fair bit of "try everything and hope something works" involved.

 

I love Pearson and have even said I'd take him back if he came back with Shakey and Walsh so there's certainly no animosity toward the man from me. But that doesn't mean I'm just going to forget how much of a tactical mess he was regardless of how nice and convenient it would be to do so.

 

I get a lot of your points and don't disagree with lots of them but I feel like he "learned slowly" rather than was "found wanting" but people see things differently.  I feel the same as you regarding him I think, I am not necessarily clamouring for his return but if he did I would be happy and willing to give him another go as I think he genuinely has a set of skills as a manager that I think could be a success with us again as I think at every singe point in his career with us he definitely learned from his mistakes.  I think he maybe learned too slowly but he definitely learned.  Thanks for your response though, it is good to see reasoned posts on this forum.  I think your first post came over as more "anti-Pearson" than maybe it was meant.  I don't have to many pre-held beliefs with regards to Pearson, I try and look at the stats and whichever way you look at them he was certainly one of our most successful managers (yes a lot of his success was not in the PL but that's not his fault really).  I do feel it is unfair to dismiss our final run as it was literally the greatest escape in the history of the PL and it seems churlish to dismiss any win in the PL, even if you feel the teams we beat were poor or not at the races.  Anyhoo, interesting times ahead.  X

[coolhandfox]

3 hours ago, Long Eaton Fox said:

Nigel Pearson

 

1  Got us promoted from league 1 

 

2  Got us promoted from the Championship 

 

3  The great escape from relegation

 

4  And most importantly it was his team that won us the Premier league

 

5  He has never been sacked for football reasons

 

6  And yes I voted yes in the poll

Could you see another PL team appointing him?

[coolhandfox]

3 minutes ago, RumbleFox said:

I get a lot of your points and don't disagree with lots of them but I feel like he "learned slowly" rather than was "found wanting" but people see things differently.  I feel the same as you regarding him I think, I am not necessarily clamouring for his return but if he did I would be happy and willing to give him another go as I think he genuinely has a set of skills as a manager that I think could be a success with us again as I think at every singe point in his career with us he definitely learned from his mistakes.  I think he maybe learned too slowly but he definitely learned.  Thanks for your response though, it is good to see reasoned posts on this forum.  I think your first post came over as more "anti-Pearson" than maybe it was meant.  I don't have to many pre-held beliefs with regards to Pearson, I try and look at the stats and whichever way you look at them he was certainly one of our most successful managers (yes a lot of his success was not in the PL but that's not his fault really).  I do feel it is unfair to dismiss our final run as it was literally the greatest escape in the history of the PL and it seems churlish to dismiss any win in the PL, even if you feel the teams we beat were poor or not at the races.  Anyhoo, interesting times ahead.  X

 

Good points, however like O'Neill without John Robertson and Clough without Peter Taylor, I'm not sure he will be as effect without Walsh and Shakespeare. 

Edited 9 May 2018 by coolhandfox

[RumbleFox]

1 minute ago, coolhandfox said:

 

Good points, however like O'Neill without John Robertson and Clough without Peter Taylor, I'm not sure he will be as effect without Walsh and Shakespeare. 

 

I suppose we don't really know without trying which is the risk.  In an ideal world I want Simeone but in an ideal world I'd also like a penis larger than a half Bounty so hey ho.  X

[coolhandfox]

Just now, RumbleFox said:

I suppose we don't really know without trying which is the risk.  In an ideal world I want Simeone but in an ideal world I'd also like a penis larger than a half Bounty so hey ho.  X

 

Any new manager a risk, but NP a massive risk for the owner if it goes wrong, they are going to look completely wally's if they have to sack for the third time.

 

I liked Brian Little and Micky Adams, both managed promotion to the PL, Micky had his hands tied in his PL campaign due to money issues, with money he would have more then likely keep us up.

 

Would I have either of them back, No, there is a reason NP is working in Belgium, many because their is a massive list of PL or championship clubs who would employ him. 

[4everfox]

13 minutes ago, coolhandfox said:

Could you see another PL team appointing him?

I personally would if he came with Shakespeare and Walsh. If it wasn't for the ostrich thing and the 'f#ck off and die' thing, he probably would have gotten another top flight job by now. 

[FOXYTALK]

bring in  marcelo biesla should do the trick

[Stinkenzo]

The obsession is cringeworthy

[coolhandfox]

4 minutes ago, 4everfox said:

I personally would if he came with Shakespeare and Walsh. If it wasn't for the ostrich thing and the 'f#ck off and die' thing, he probably would have gotten another top flight job by now. 

 

Maybe your right, when you look at who's been appointed, Lambert, Pardew, Hughes, etc.

 

But no one has gone for NP, who has the great escape on his record.

 

Unfortunately I can't see the 3 of them working together again. 

[inckley fox]

37 minutes ago, coolhandfox said:

 

See comments above, I just think to go back to a manager for the 3 time is unnecessary unless they where brilliant, NP was good but never brilliant. He deserve a lot of credit for sort the club out twice, once after relegation to league 1 and when he came back the second time in the Championship. However both times he had the benefit of of having the one of the biggest budget in the league. 

 

He was average in the great escape season, and didn't deserve the sack for football reasons, and then went on to do poorly at Derby.

 

Could you see any of the other PL teams appointing him?

 

Okay, I'm going to try to go through these points one by one, including those you added to my original post. Sorry if it's a bit long.

 

1. You say he struggled to get the best out of Vardy and Mahrez, which is true, but remember that these guys were also adapting to top flight football. Vardy blew hot and cold early on so we tried him in different roles until, final quarter of the season, he began to thrive. Similar could be said of Mahrez, who talked more than once about how being dropped by Pearson motivated him. If he's going to push on as a player after Leicester, I suspect another manager will have to take a hard-line with him too, and it might not have hurt in the second half of this season. So I see no shame in Pearson taking a while to turn second tier players into top flight players.

 

2. It certainly didn't take him 30 games to try three CBs, we played a 5-4-1 as of the Arsenal game in mid-February (with 13 or 14 games to go). As regards us going 3-5-2 in order to tighten up defensively, prior to that we'd only shipped more than two goals on three occasions, I think. The game when we conceded the most was Spurs (3-4), after the switch to 3-5-2. It was considered an all-out attack approach, rather than a shoring up of the defence, when he made that final conversion to a standard 3-5-2. 

 

3. I'm sure your involvement in local football gives you a better insight into tactics than me, though I'd like to add that tactics do interest me but I don't feel enough of an authority to compare successful top level managers on their tactical nous. Successful managers vs. unsuccessful ones would be easier, but I'm not enough of an expert to tell you what the likes of Eriksson did right and Pearson did wrong. My suspicion is that Pearson got his tactics right more often than Sven. And if the likes of Arsene Wenger and Alex Ferguson thought Pearson knew what he was doing, tactically or otherwise, then I'd tend to listen.

 

4. I agree he was slow to make changes. Look how long Konchesky lasted in the side in 2014-15, for instance. But he explained many times that in order to foster the right spirit, and encourage a gradual transition, he couldn't always make sweeping changes. Puel might have benefited from this advice. As for subs, I never considered him especially poor at them, even if others disagreed.

 

5. I agree that Pleat, Taylor and Levein weren't tactically astute - that's my point! But they were all supposed to be. Sven actually talked about how in-depth Taylor's knowledge of tactics was, and he was widely praised for what a student of the game he was. It didn't count for much.

 

6. NP was good but never brilliant? Not the case with us, unless you're the sort of fan who would give the credit for signing Vardy, Mahrez, Drinkwater to the board who signed the cheques for 1m, 350K, 750K, rather than the management team who found players worth a sum total of 150 or 200m for next to nothing. And, on top of that, to go from the third tier to the top, keep a side up and leave them with an in-form side (assembled on a budget) which would stay in form and win the league a year later... you'd have to be a little ungrateful not to find that brilliant. Do PL clubs want him? No, he was too way awkward. They'd prefer the merry-go-round of Puel, Pardew, Pulis, Moyes etc.  But thankfully we had Pearson, and while he didn't win the league for us, he was the difference between a third tier side and a side which was a year off winning it. 

 

7. He wasn't average in the Great Escape season. In fact, by definition he wasn't, because the average position of a promoted side is lower than our finish under NP. To keep a side up, to end a season in that sort of form and capable of doing what they did next, suggests a guy who'd done somewhat better than the average newly-promoted boss.

 

8. As for Derby, just as you point out that Sousa's stay at Leicester wasn't long enough for us to judge, I think the same could be applied to Pearson at Derby. No manager has gone there and evaded the sack under Mel Morris, and they knew full well that Pearson needs time to establish himself (something which may be an issue if we're considering him for next season, by the way) but they pulled the trigger anyway. I'd be reluctant to use that against him and it certainly has nothing to do with what a great boss he was for us, just like Clough's failure at Leeds tells you nothing about his work for Derby or Forest.

[Long Eaton Fox]

1 hour ago, coolhandfox said:

Could you see another PL team appointing him?

No because they all seem to appoint foreign managers, who know nothing about english football, who turn out to be crap and are sacked within the season.

 

Does this ring any bells?