Can Pearson handle a group with low morale?

[NotTheMarketLeader]

So the last time I remember a run like this was a couple of years when we still somehow crept into the play offs with THAT Forest game. Obviously the opposition were far more inferior but our side wasn't a million miles away from where it is now. I would say stick with Pearson this season no matter how it pans out, I believe that last year alone has earned him that right. However, when morale is low, is his personality more of a catalyst to further destroy confidence?

I thought his comments about wood after the saints game were bang out of order. His starting 11 didn't even create a chance and it was already game over when Wood had his chance. Either way, the comment isn't going to help the lad.

Hopefully just another poor character assessment to join the other dozen threads on here. We will see against Sunderland.

[Guest Papasmurf]

To hear him speak on match of the day you'd have thought it was 0 - 0 or we were at least in the game when Wood missed his chance.

[LCFC Rennie]

He's the reason they have low morale.

GET HIM OUT!

Clever. Must have really thought that through.

[NotTheMarketLeader]

I agree, it was a shocking miss which I have to say smacks of a team bound for relegation. However, it seemed to me a way of Pearson absolving himself of any responsibility for a lack of offensive ambition which, despite a resolute defensive display for 70 minutes, or whatever it was, results in yet another defeat. Lest we forget we were 2-0 down without one shot nearing the target at that time at that point. That is not the fault of any of the strikers but one of a manager who seems to have decided to try out a completely different style of play to what has been used by the team for 2 years? And can't see it's not working. Our game is a pressing game when without the ball, instigated by a front two, and when with the ball, a team that has pace up front, and the ability to move the ball quickly through midfield passing. One of these two attributes are the only way to win games consistently. The lads look as befuddled as most of the fans with this tactical turnaround which is why it's not working. Slowing the game down in midfield and negating our pace up front is everything an opposition manager would be hoping to accomplish. Can't understand why Pearson is doing their job for them. We will be down by Xmas unless he gets back to what suits us which is an absolute disaster given how we ran away with it last year. Poor recruitment and poor management afraid - and I am a fan of Nige

[Corky]

Everyone deserves their own special thread to point out how incompetent they think the best manager we've had for a decade is.

 

We're ok at the moment, it's not quite crisis.

 

When people suggest throwing the kids in or bringing Walsh/ Cottee/ Joachim/ Coatsworth in as manager is when we are in deep shit.

[Bettsj2]

And look how other teams who were on dismal form when we were dong well have turned it around, or starting to it around.

Burnley were doomed and guaranteed relegation. Now with their first win they are two points from safety.

Newcastle wanted Pardew out, winless and looked awful. Four games later they are closing in on fourth spot.

QPR were leaking goals for fun and looked horrendous and are now playing well and were unlucky not take all three points yesterday against Man City.

So if those three teams can turn it around after some awful performances and results then why can't fans have faith that we will do the same.

The alarming factor is all those teams started poorly and improved. In some of those games they looked threatening going forward and showed some desire (Burnley vs Everton, QPR vs Liverpool for example). We have gone the other way and not only has our form dropped, our spirit is disolving and our manager is not making any sense at all.

To repeat, its not just the fact we are on a bad run, we all accept that they can happen, its the nature of the performances and the reaction to them of the manager that has people calling for his head.

There is nothing about OUR team and OUR manager, that is currently giving me cause to think it can be turned around. All people seem to say is, 'he's turned it around before', 'other teams have turned it around', 'have faith in the manager' but nobody can show anything in the here and now thats going on that points to a recovery.

During the bad run we suffered before the Watford play off defeat, Pearson would say things like 'I know exactly what needs to happen and i'll sort it out'. He said those kind of things with confidence, authority and a sureness in himself that made you think twice. Now all we're hearing are bizarre rants and disrespectful answers to perfectly legitimate questions. He sounds like a man lost and I cannot find any confidence in that.

[Bettsj2]

We're ok at the moment, it's not quite crisis.

When people suggest throwing the kids in or bringing Walsh/ Cottee/ Joachim/ Coatsworth in as manager is when we are in deep shit.

Has someone actually suggested Coatsworth? Tell me thats true?!

[Dan]

I think it will just take one little thing falling in our favour to turn things around - but you're more likely to make your own luck by playing positive football and we aren't doing that. Something will go our way soon, I'm sure of it.

 

Our next win will not be by more than a goal.

 

 

Did some of our fans seriously think there wouldn't be spells during the season where we would go on a bad run of form and struggle......

 

I didn't think there would be any period under this management and with this squad that we would be so flat, so deprived of character and so uncreative. I fully accepted we'd have bad runs but the level of performances have been unacceptable. Make no mistake, if Southampton had scored early they would've won by at least four, at least.

[MC Prussian]

This manager has now had three devastating runs of form in his reign - that which cost us promotion in 2013, and that which saw us fall from play-off challengers to mid-table mediocrity in 2011-12 in addition to the current run. All three have come after very positive results (the Blackpool game which saw us go into the play-offs in November 2011, the Wolves game which cemented our automatic spot in early 2013, and now the Man U game), which does ask some questions about how we deal with these moments.

 

Two things - one of which is largely conjecture - have bothered me more than others in recent weeks. They could both be an influence on squad morale, and they equally indicate a manager who is unclear on why his side are doing so badly at the moment. 

 

The first is his apparent issue with Mahrez and Knockaert. This is not only a morale issue, but it has also seen a player who has been one of our key creative forces this season (the others, perhaps, being Ulloa and Vardy) dropped from the side at a time when we can't buy a goal. In some ways it seems to me that both represent easier targets for a manager looking for someone to blame than, say, Nugent, Drinkwater or De Laet. Both are foreign, small of stature, they speak poor English and, while friends with each other, are not part of the perceived in-crowd (King, Konchesky, Morgan, Schlupp, Moore, Nugent are all supposed to be good mates). And with this pair he has possibly broken his own rule about not singling out individuals in the press. I hope these players, two of our more creative, do not feel picked on. He coped very badly the last time his squad became fractured by the fall-outs with St Ledger and Mills.

 

The second is the way he has repeatedly pointed towards our problem as not taking chances. For me this either means that he is unaware of what the real problem is, or is papering over the cracks. In truth we have had a pathetic number of goalscoring opportunities over the past six games in comparison to pretty much any other Premier League side. On the other hand our work rate has been rightly called into question on various occasions. Leicester look like a side who are being frustrated, rather than a side capable of frustrating superior teams. Unless we learn the importance of off-the-ball movement, commitment in the challenge and hassling the opposition - and I'm astonished by how our four centre midfielders were so easily over-run by Southampton's 2 or 3 yesterday - then we will be relegated. Squads whose quality is comparable with ours can stay up - but only with a relentless work ethic.

You make it sound as if no manager bar Nigel Pearson goes through bad spells.

 

Fact is, despite earlier difficulties and shortcomings in the Championship, he turned the ship around in the end and gave the club and the fans promotion at the third time of asking.

We're in the Premier League now, what do I care how we struggled one level further down years ago? It's only natural that a club, team or manager faces tough times occasionally. No manager comes without flaws and the exciting thing about being a football fan is that you just can't tell when the sweet stuff is happening. Same goes for rough patches and even relegation. The general hope and excitement compensate massively for the sloppy results.

 

As for "we will be relegated should we continue to play this way" - that is pure conjecture, too!

Things aren't going according to plan, but such is life and such is football. Otherwise, it would all be bland and boring.

[Captain...]

This squad does seem to be a team with a very fragile confidence, if only there was something the fans could do to, you know, support them, give them a lift...

 

...Oh yeah I know, stop being a bunch of moaning little cvnts, that would be a start.

[chris_lcfc_85]

This is silly. He's turned it around a few times so i dont think this should be even questioned.

 

Plus its not like we're not trying etc, we gave everything Saturday. Hopefully things will turn soon

[inckley fox]

You make it sound as if no manager bar Nigel Pearson goes through bad spells.

 

Fact is, despite earlier difficulties and shortcomings in the Championship, he turned the ship around in the end and gave the club and the fans promotion at the third time of asking.

We're in the Premier League now, what do I care how we struggled one level further down years ago? It's only natural that a club, team or manager faces tough times occasionally. No manager comes without flaws and the exciting thing about being a football fan is that you just can't tell when the sweet stuff is happening. Same goes for rough patches and even relegation. The general hope and excitement compensate massively for the sloppy results.

 

As for "we will be relegated should we continue to play this way" - that is pure conjecture, too!

Things aren't going according to plan, but such is life and such is football. Otherwise, it would all be bland and boring.

 

Of course you're right, but if some people use NP's past record at a lower level to suggest that he is the man to keep us up, then you have to look at aspects of his record which might suggest the contrary! But I agree strongly that we should not be looking at his success or failure at a lower level, we should be looking at his adequacy at this level versus that of, say, Pulis. And where Pearson is concerned, the jury is very much out and early signs are not especially promising. But I would not for a second argue against him needing more time.

 

But if we are going to look back in time, then we can't ignore what has gone wrong for him in the past. The first of those three runs cost us a play-off place in 2012. The second cost us an automatic place in 2013. If the third costs us our Premier League status in 2015 then, on reflection, Pearson's second spell at the club will have left the club back at square one.

 

And going back to 'we will be relegated if we continue playing like this' - surely that's a certainty. One point from six games, 31 shots (versus 64 by clubs playing against us) and 14 shots on goal (versus 32 against) will obviously see us go down if it's stretched over a season. And if Pearson's conclusion from these outcomes is that our strikers need to be taking their chances, when we're creating less than half the chances of the sides we're up against, then we're unlikely to improve on that either.

 

My suspicion is that he IS aware of a deeper-lying problem and is acting on it. And I suspect we will improve, and with him in charge, but he's going to have to learn from his errors, and fast.

[foxpleasure]

Again, this isn't the point. This is a worse run than any we went through between August 1996 and May 2000. One year later we would go on another such run which would end with us in the second tier and very nearly out of business all together.

 

It's not simply the run, either. We have scored only one away goal all season, but continue to approach away games with a 'backs to the wall from the off' game plan. We are in the relegation zone and we are the most out-of-form side, by far, in the relegation zone.

 

Worse still, for Pearson at least, we are at the stage in the season (i.e. between September and January) when clubs who fire their manager tend to fare better. As I stated on another thread, over the past five years there have been ten sides who were in the bottom six at this point of the season who have fired their manager during these months, and only three of them have gone down. Sides who waited did not fare so well.

 

I think, for the next couple of games at least, we will be in a position where one win will make everything look a lot brighter. Confidence will be lifted. Pearson will get his chance to settle the side. As such it is probably too early to make a change. But things need to get better, and fast, or the argument to get rid of him will be a very strong one.

Any idea how many in the bottom 6 that didnt change managers managed to stay up as a result?