Pearson

[Dickie Greenleaf]

The guy is a boring bastard who is always poncing around Baldwins like he is larry long balls. Move on. You've got Monty Burns to worry about now

[Prospero]

This may be a speculative post in which I am trying to make sense of our current situation. If I was writing my previous post again I would amend it to agree with Unreachable’s opinions to provide a better balance.

I know the Pearson years are over and we must move on but having enjoyed looked through my copy of Of Fossils and Foxes the historical record is important in understanding how our wonderful club has evolved. And recent history is important. To Of Fossils and Foxes I would add the following.

Southampton dismissed Nigel Pearson on 3 May 2008, despite the fact that he had helped the club to avoid relegation from the championship. Southampton’s chief executive at the time was Lees Hoos. Leicester City was relegated at the end of the 2008 season with Ian Holloway as manager. Lee Hoos was then appointed as Leicester City’s chief executive on 30 May 2008. Subsequently, Nigel Pearson was appointed as Leicester’s manager, following the sacking of Ian Holloway. It is obvious that the new chief executive thought that from experience Pearson could do a job for Leicester in League 1 and that Mandaric was persuaded to agree.

In the event, Pearson led Leicester to the league 1 championship in 2009 and subsequently to the championship semi final playoffs in the 2010 season. At which point, to the utter surprise of the fans, Pearson resigned to go to Hull. He says the club did not do enough to keep him; Mandaric says he wanted Nigel to stay.

I think it is becoming clear that the role of Lee Hoos as chief executive was crucial. In most organisations the practical policy is determined by the chief executive, rather than the chairman. The chief executive runs the club. It is likely that it was Lee Hoos, asked by Mandaric to sell the club, who determined that a higher profile manager would help to market the club worldwide.

From his knowledge of Pearson he decided that the club could do better. He allowed Hull to talk to Pearson and might even have encouraged this move. As the owner Manadric could have prevented this approach and he could have decided to keep Pearson at Leicester. Instead he allowed his chief executive to maneuver Pearson out of the club, whilst helping to court Sousa as the new figurehead. It is possible that, as unreachable says, Pearson did not help himself by not signing his contract and by other demands. But at this point letting Pearson go was not necessarily good business.

Particularly as the new manager proved too inexperienced to move the club forward. This raised the stakes for Lee Hoos and the new owners. Were they prepared to recruit a more highly experienced and higher profile manager for the club? Mandaric must have been involved but the chief executive would have headed up the negotiations. As we have seen the owners have now appointed Sven Goran Eriksson, a world class manager. They are prepared to pay him £2m over two years and he says they are prepared to provide the finance necessary to return the club to the premier league. This could be seen as good business by the chief executive, as well as being, we hope, good for our football and league position.

I would like to suggest that it is the chief executive, at present Lee Hoos, who is the businessman and who pulls the strings and it is Mandaric who is the more naïve football fan. If he is asked to endorse the manager one day and sack him the next, he will do so. At the press conference for Sven, he said he wanted Pearson to stay. I believe him. The fact is that, although he was the owner and remains the chairman, he depends upon his chief executive for policy and advice. This is why Pearson has implied that his differences were with Lee Hoos and not Mandaric because it is the chief executive who runs the business end of the club and not the chairman.

If I am right and I may not be, Mandaric does not deserve all the blame for what has happened to the club. He is first and foremost a football fan who has been prepared to finance the club so far. Nor is Lee Hoos personally to blame; he is doing his best to raise finance. The club is caught up in our capitalist economy. He has done his best to compete. We have to accept that our football club is a business that operates in a global context. A different chief executive might have decided that keeping a successful manager after two years was good business but this one did not think so. It is possible that he now has a better plan. It certainly looks so to my view. Only time, as the cliché says, will tell.

[Miquel The Work Geordie]

So it just confimed Lee Hoos is a complete waste of skin and organs?

[Wymsey]

So it just confimed Lee Hoos is a complete waste of skin and organs?

In a nutshell yes.

[Miquel The Work Geordie]

Cheers, Wymes.

[fsdss]

The last post sounds like it was very well informed as it DOES make sense. I do think that Pearson is trying to get an advantage over all this by mentioning it when we are playing Hull next and that a defeat at Leicester will get the Hull fans calling for him to be sacked (well more than they are already!!)

Let's get behind Swen next weekend and let Pearson know that we respect him but we are not going to lose sleep or more importantly points to him over this!!!

[Wymsey]

Cheers, Wymes.

I wasn't being rude to you by the way.

[ozleicester]

Pearson quit Leicester!

Thanks for 2 years.. good luck as long as it doesnt negatively affect LCFC

[Stig the Lawnmower]

Mandaric will be back at Pompey by Christmas. It looks likely that Lee Hoos will have moved on too by then.

The arrival of Sven was down to the Thais, not the chairman.

However Pearson is playing mind games with us too. Why has he waited until now to speak out? Could the timing possibly be linked to Hull's forthcoming visit in a couple of weeks?

Pearson was a good manager but not a top-drawer one. I doubt a Little or an O'Neill would have messed up the playoffs like he did last season. Has everyone forgotten the Wayne Brown episode? Or the shockingly defensive 4-5-1 formation in the first leg? But for those errors, it might have been us playing (and winning!) at Anfield this afternoon.

Anyway, Pearson is now history. Long live Sven!

good post. get over it.

pearson will never manage at the top of the premiership. Sven has, and will again

let's close the thread

[shen]

He's made it very clear where his loyalties lie - at Fratton Park.

Once he's got shot of us (that is, when the league finally approve the takeover) he'll be able to move back there, providing he can convince the courts of his innocence when his tax fraud caseis finally heard next month.

Then why is he still chairman at this club, if his interests are no longer here?

Good question. Maybe, because his international profile (the Portugal caps and Champions League honours) was indeed a lot higher than Pearson's, Mandaric thought NP was expendable in order to hasten the sale and thus recoup at least some of his "investment".

I see your point, but Swansea weren't exactly in the limelight for having such a figure as their manager. I don't think going for Sousa did more to persuade the Thais to come here, if that was indeed the motive.

I'd have thought Pearson was more professional than that. He's certainly been in the past when we played against his previous clubs. What's happened since he left us should be no concern to him, except when he comes up against us.

He's not acted unprofessional, on the contrary. He has said he resigned thus officially taking the blame for leaving. He's been very diplomatic while admitting that he had a hard time working with Hoos.

The difference was, MON didn't allow off-field issues (remember his battle with Pierpoint and the Gang of 4?) to affect performances on the pitch. I doubt whether Sven will do so either.

How did the off-field issues affect the team's performances? Even after the alleged dressing room bust up, the team played their hearts out and should've gone through to the final if it hadn't been for a poor decision by the ref. We made the play-offs unexpectedly and came within a whisker of going to the final... what more could you ask for?

[shen]

So are you saying that he bought us to make us an unsuccessful business?

No, read it again. He hasn't tried making us a successful business, just wanted to raise our profile and hike the price so he could sell us quickly with a profit

Where we all the anti-Mandaric chants at Norwich and against S****horpe then?

At Norwich they got drowned out by the happy-clappers who lap up anything they are served by the Club, and Saturday was a joke.

That's my point exactly, we have many happy-clappers/******/idiots whatever you want to call it.