Looking at Watford what a cracking job Nigel Pearson has done there

They were never going to keep Pearson on as manager. He was just big samming it. Watford want to be challenging for European places. They want someone fancy. You'd accuse them of getting a bit hubristic and big time Charlie, but the approach has worked well for them so far, and it looks like they'll outlast Bournemouth and the sainted Eddie Howe.
 
So, according to some, if you had a bad time at a club, it means you're crap then basically. So I guess coz Bergkamp flopped at Inter and Henry at Juventus, means that they're lousy footballers!
 
Has it worked for Watford? FA Cup finalists and challenging for Europe. Next season 4 managers, Pearson rescuing them from relegation. Where might Watford be if they had stuck for once instead of always sacking the boss? They might be like the team they defeated in the cup semi final last season, Wolves and challenging for Europe.
 
fmttmadmin said:
Has it worked for Watford? FA Cup finalists and challenging for Europe. Next season 4 managers, Pearson rescuing them from relegation. Where might Watford be if they had stuck for once instead of always sacking the boss? They might be like the team they defeated in the cup semi final last season, Wolves and challenging for Europe.
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It definitely worked. Compare them with us. We were both fighting to get promotion at the same time. They're still in the prem and got to a cup final. We are hoping Wigan get deducted 12 points to stay in the 2nd division.

The difference? We appoint some Muppet, and give him 50 million to spend on players, he buys 5 centre forwards. We sack him, appoint the polar opposite who wants an entirely different set of players. We then get rid of him and we're back to playing fancy attacking pressing football. There's even talk of adopting a model like Watford to help with continuity. Then we sack him and appoint again the polar opposite.

Watford adopt a coherent transfer strategy that isn't defined by the whims of Garry monks agent. They have a balanced squad and bring in managers to get the best of them.

One team has a plan. The other team doesn't.
 
Ilsan_Boro said:
Yes, fair enough, he's done that when he took Leicester up. He was given a lot to spend, however, and they certainly bent the FFP rules that season. Fair achievement still, although he has never replicated that elsewhere.

He did keep them up in their first season back. Some might argue the squad of players he had should never have been in any danger of going down, mind. Indeed, his successor seemed to get a lot more of out a not massively changed squad the following season.

I get why some people like him as a manager but for me there are far too many negatives outweighing the positives when you look at the overall picture. I also think he's left too many of his longer term jobs in rather dubious circumstances.
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Contrary to popular myth: Nigel Pearson did not have "a lot to spend"
He inherited a squad of 37 players(!) in November 2011.
He loaned out and released many of those players and picked up the likes of Danny Drinkwater, Ben Marshall and Wes Morgan for a fee of no more than 3M .

20 January 2012 CMDanny DrinkwaterManchester United £1,000,000[35]
30 January 2012 CBWes MorganNottingham Forest £1,000,000[36][37]
31 January 2012 RWBen MarshallStoke City £750,000–£1,000,000[37][38]

In his first full season 2012-2013 he had the following players at his disposal: many were there from previous Manangers tenures and some on big contracts. Nigel spent 1M on Jamie Vardy [who]. He shipped out those who were deadwood and made a profit on sales.
Leicester 2012-2013 Season.jpg
The new owners were just bedding in when he got sacked in 2015.
He had Harry Kane on loan from Tottenham Hotspur at one point.
Players like Drinkwater and Andy King were hardly household names. The latter had been with the Foxes longer than any Manager had endured at the club in almost 10 years.
He laid the foundations for the "tinkerman" to take them to the top of the Premiership.

Look at those who were purchased from 2012 onwards - thats when Nigel Pearson began to shape his squad and take them to the next level.
 
Redlips said:
Did Nigel sign mahrez and Kante?
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Yes, scouted by Steve Walsh, who Everton went on to poach. However they gave him the chop i believe, hardly surprising after some of their shocking transfers. No one at our club is ever held accountable for transfers mind you.
 
Redlips said:
Did Nigel sign mahrez and Kante?
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The Foxes recruitment dept identified Mahrez and agreed a fee of 450,000K`s ! Foxes sold him for 60M to Man City!
Big Nige agreed to spend 5M on Kante, who was sold just a season later to Chelsea for 32M.!
 
Zoophonic said:
All this Kante/ Mahrez stuff tells me that the Leicester recruitment team are brilliant. Can we have them?
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According to wiki Steve Walsh is now working for Charlotte in the American League. They signed Vardy, Mahrez and Kante on his watch. Then he went to Everton and spunked all their money on gulphy sigurdsson so now his name is mud and he has to scratch out a living in some backwater.
 
Pearson has done well in management, but I never felt he was as special as some on here think. His managerial record is similar to Pulis and Warnock.
 
Sheriff_John_Bunnell_ret said:
According to wiki Steve Walsh is now working for Charlotte in the American League. They signed Vardy, Mahrez and Kante on his watch. Then he went to Everton and spunked all their money on gulphy sigurdsson so now his name is mud and he has to scratch out a living in some backwater.
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Which sounds over the top given that when Siggurdsson was signed my Evertonian work mates were over the moon. Football is full of fickleness. I wonder who was behind the decisions made by Bournemouth over the past three seasons. My they have spunked cash on some dross. And now they are getting relegated as well. Wonder if those people have been exiled.
 
Leicester were fined for breaching FFP rules the season Pearson took them up to the premier league. They eventually came to an agreement with the EFL over the amount the fine would be. In other words, they didn't dispute that they'd broken the rules.

So it's no myth at all that they spent heavily that season in their quest to go up. To be fair to them and Pearson, they're not the only club who has done this. Many if not most teams who've comfortably gone up in the automatic promotion places have bent the FFP rules and have obviously thought the fine would be worth the extra income they'd get in the premier league.

Pearson still deserves credit for taking them up even though he was well supported financially. Plenty of other managers have also been backed by their owners but have failed to deliver. He was also quite well supported in his first stint at Leicester by Milan Mandaric when he took them back up the championship. Again, it's fair to say that plenty of other managers have been given a good chance to take a bigger club out of the 3rd tier and failed.

However, Nigel Pearson is nearly 57 years old - he is not a young manager. Fair enough, 2 promotions with Leicester and he kept them in the premier League for one season. But where are all the other concrete achievements for this supposed managerial genius? Take out his Leicester stints, and his admirers are scraping the barrel for tenuous links to what are other people's successes.

Sure, many Leicester fans remember him fondly. But Hull fans don't, Derby fans don't and it seems from what zoophonic mentioned above a fair few Watford fans aren't too keen either.

When you're appointing a manager you can do your due diligence and look through all their past record or you can make your mind up beforehand and just look for cherry picked evidence supporting what you'd decided already. A few people would seemingly do the latter and appoint Pearson.

Personally, I think he has his virtues but as a longer term option there seems to be a lot on his record suggesting that sooner rather than later he'll be falling out with someone, throwing his toys out the pram or otherwise engineering his departure.
 
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