Nigel Pearson: No-nonsense, surly but brilliant company
Leicester City had just suffered the trauma of relegation, needing a firm hand to steady the ship and a new captain at the helm to steer it.
A rebuild of the squad and a new direction for everyone was required. And yet they made a bold appointment. If it had gone wrong, it could have been a catastrophe.
Enzo Maresca is not the first manager to arrive at Leicester with such a brief. Nigel Pearson faced a similar scenario when he took over at Leicester City for his first spell in charge 15 years ago.
Similar to Maresca, Pearson had little managerial experience when he was appointed in June 2008 by Milan Mandaric, tasked with guiding Leicester back into the Championship after a first relegation to the third tier.
His only other roles had been brief fire-fighting jobs at Carlisle United and Southampton; the former he had kept in the Football League with the infamous Jimmy Glass last-minute winner and the latter he kept in the Championship at Leicester’s expense.
Besides a few caretaker positions, Pearson had been an assistant to Gary Megson, Bryan Robson, Glenn Roeder and Stuart Pearce. His appointment was seen as a risk and a step into the unknown by Leicester — just as the move to bring in Maresca from Manchester City was this summer.
But the club will be hoping the outcome will be similar, as Pearson is one of the most influential managers in their modern history.
Claudio Ranieri won the Premier League and Brendan Rodgers the FA Cup, but the role Pearson played in building Leicester up — twice — to reach those achievements cannot be underplayed.
Today, he returns to King Power Stadium with Bristol City, in charge of an opposition team for a competitive game for the first time since he left the club for the second time in 2015, having defied the odds to keep Leicester in the Premier League. A year later they were champions under Ranieri.
He is sure to receive a warm reception from the fans who appreciate the role he has played in Leicester’s rise from the dark days that followed their relegation from the Championship.
Pearson may have clashed with a few fans during his two reigns, as he occasionally clashed with journalists, officials, opponents and even some inside the club, but his no-nonsense and committed approach earned him the respect of the vast majority of supporters, players, staff and journalists — including myself.
Pearson did not go out of his way to court the press in 2009 when I took over as Leicester City correspondent for the Leicester Mercury.
I had covered West Bromwich Albion, where he was still revered by those who had worked with him and they assured me I would get on great with Pearson, who had just guided Leicester back to the Championship.
It remains the toughest season of my career and the steepest learning curve for a journalist trying to tap into the culture and workings of a new club.
Pearson could be difficult, to say the least. He was prickly and surly with the media to the extent that, after an away game at Preston North End when he was particularly short and unresponsive, the local journalists approached me to ask if he was always like that. They then sympathised, pointing out their own difficulties with David Moyes at the start of his managerial career.
But while he was guarded with the media and occasionally rubbed up against authority, Pearson evoked loyalty from those around him, including his players, who would run through a brick wall for him. That season, they were one misguided penalty (a Panenka) away from the play-off final.
Yann Kermorgant may have been left on the wrong side of Pearson after that but still, to this day, members of that Leicester squad speak incredibly highly of their manager.
So, it was a shock to everyone when he was allowed to leave to join Hull City in the summer of 2010. His relationship with the chief executive, Lee Hoos, had soured to such an extent that when Hull approached for permission to speak to Pearson, Hoos approved while Mandaric was on safari with his grandchildren and unreachable to a surprised Pearson.
I then saw the other side to Pearson, beyond the public projection, as he invited me to Hull’s training ground where he apologised for having been so tough to deal with, which was unexpected but greatly appreciated.
That wasn’t the last time I heard from him. His loyalty to the staff who hadn’t moved with him to Hull remained and he called me when he heard that Leicester was looking to place much-loved club ambassador Alan Birchenall into retirement. He wanted to show ‘Birchy’ his support.
That connection with people still at Leicester was the main reason he returned with “unfinished business” in 2011. The club’s new owners, who would become the Srivaddhanaprabha family, went for a big-name manager in Sven-Goran Eriksson after their takeover and spent a fortune on new players as they tried to fulfil their ambition of turning Leicester into a Premier League club. The approach failed and they needed a new (and familiar) direction.
Those who had worked with Pearson before, and were still at Leicester, championed his cause and convinced chairman Khun Vichai that Pearson was his man.
It was a decision Khun Vichai would never regret and their bond was close, despite Pearson’s eventual departure in 2015. It was Khun Vichai who stood by Pearson and reversed an initial decision to make a managerial change amid that first season in the Premier League, which became known as the phantom sacking. The last time Pearson returned to King Power Stadium was to pay his respects to his friend after Khun Vichai’s death in the helicopter crash outside King Power Stadium in 2018.
In 2011, Pearson was tasked with rebuilding Leicester’s squad again. It was full of high-earning players who were not gelling, and Pearson did not waste any time. He replaced Matt Mills, Sol Bamba, Neil Danns and Jermaine Beckford, bringing in Wes Morgan, Jamie Vardy, Danny Drinkwater, Matty James, Ritchie De Laet and eventually Riyad Mahrez.
The spirit within the camp returned, and while Pearson could still have his moments with the media — most notably when he called a reporter an ostrich in a post-match rant that went viral just before his side hit a run of form to secure their Premier League status — he was a more mellow version (note: he did apologise to that journalist at the next press conference as well).
He still would not suffer fools gladly, and once walked out of an interview when a television company sent a young cameraman to interview Pearson before a cup game but supplied him with the wrong questions to ask.
There were other moments, like the clash with a particularly vocal critic in the stand behind the dugouts during a home defeat to Liverpool, for which he would not apologise, and a bizarre exchange on the touchline with Crystal Palace’s James McArthur, but by then Pearson was defending his players, deflecting negativity from them as they struggled to adapt to the Premier League. He would create a bubble around the training ground, making it “us against the world”.
It was a tactic that worked and earned devotion from his players. Two players he signed, Vardy and Marc Albrighton, still remain while others work in and around the club, such as Morgan. They will give him a warm welcome, as they will for ex-Leicester players Matty James and Andy King, plus former physio Dave Rennie.
It will be an emotional day for Pearson and his family back at King Power. He left the club twice and on both occasions it had nothing to do with results. Not many managers can say that.
A few years ago, Pearson invited a handful of journalists to sit with him in his beloved garden at his Sheffield home. He spoke about his love of nature and was about to go for a walk in the local hills to prepare for the Three Peaks Challenge a few weeks later (he supports numerous charities, including being a patron of LOROS Hospice in Leicester and once rode across the north of England for the charity).
He was asked how he felt about the team he built going on to win the Premier League. He understatedly and contentedly replied: “I know the part I played.”
The majority of Leicester fans inside King Power Stadium today will know too.
