Nigel Pearson – What's Wrong, Mate?

What's Nigel Pearson's problem? It's a question most of us have probably asked ourselves more than once this season. Maybe you read about how, in December, the Leicester City manager was filmed telling an abusive fan to "fuck off and die" and thought, 'Shit, that's a bit much. What's Nigel Pearson's problem?' Perhaps you saw that, in February, he pinned Crystal Palace's James McArthur to the ground by his throat and so you turned to a friend and said, 'Jesus Christ, what's Nigel Pearson's problem?' There is a very good chance you heard how, during a recent press conference, he accused a journalist of being an "ostrich" before storming out. Or how he called another reporter a "prick". Or how he managed to initiate a war of words with Gary Lineker. Who actually thinks it's a good idea to pick a fight with Gary Lineker? I'll tell you who: Nigel Pearson. So again… what's his fucking problem?

But there are only so many times you can ask this question before it ceases to be rhetorical and instead becomes something you genuinely want to get to the bottom of. As he continues to fight tooth and nail to keep his club in the Premier League, the 51-year-old has become a one-man study in pressure, paranoia and a weird type of aggression that manages to be both passive and active at the same time. I'd say he was a compelling figure, but that's not exactly true. I actually find him very difficult to watch, and I don't think I'm the only one. You'd think his behaviour might make him seem in some way "colourful" or elevate him to the status of cult hero in that gonzo, Ian Holloway, Soccer AM sort of way. English football will always find room in its heart for a "character", but part of the deal is that, in return, you at least offer occasional moments of levity and a sense that, deep down, you know it's a funny old game. But Pearson presents none of this. He is a walking LOL vacuum. He is a banter black hole. One of the most telling things about him is that, despite the wealth of material to work with, he has not spawned a single halfway decent Twitter parody. There is just nothing funny about him. Even his otherwise hilarious £6 Mr Topper haircut seems to glower at you and say: "Just keep walking." And it's Nigel Pearson, so you do.

Anyway, before we continue, what do we know? Pearson spent his playing days as an archetypal knucklehead centre-half, most notably for Sheffield Wednesday and Middlesbrough, before entering coaching, finding work as henchman for a series of absolutely-zero-fucking-nonsense English managers in Gary Megson, Bryan Robson, Stuart Pearce and Sam Allardyce. It's not exactly a background that screams "Louche football sophisticate!" but then by the standards of some of these peers, Pearson is practically cerebral. He reads the Guardian. He enjoys doing crosswords. Rather than golfing jollies to Spain, he books himself on solitary walking holidays to the Carpathian mountains. It was during one such trip to Romania that he was, famously, attacked by a pack of wild dogs and had to fight them off by backing himself into a corner and blinding them, one by one, with his walking poles. Short of Colin Cooper driving a stake through the heart of an actual vampire, it's hard to imagine a more Gothic tableau involving a former Boro defender. "I can take care of myself, don't you worry," he announced after the McArthur incident. "I got a bit scared to be honest," was McArthur's own take. There's part of you that suspects Pearson was secretly delighted to be attacked by a pack of wild dogs. There's part of you that suspects he went on holiday with that express intention.

Is he a decent manager? His track record stacks up quite nicely. But read between the lines and his career in the dugout points to a man who has learnt that football is an unsentimental business. In his first full-time role, he managed to keep Carlisle in the football league. In his second, he kept Southampton in the Championship, only to then be binned-off in favour of former Dutch international Jan Poortvliet, a man who promptly helped get Saints relegated the following season. His first stint at Leicester – in which he oversaw promotion from League One followed by a playoff finish in the Championship – ended when the club's chairman was so blatantly angling to replace him with former Portugal international Paulo Sousa that Pearson just thought, 'Fuck this' and went off to manage Hull. And if he seems a little chippy and defensive in his demeanour today – and duh, of course he does – you have to wonder if this has anything to do with being consistently reminded that ex-knucklehead centre-halves called Nigel will always have to step aside for continental ex-internationals, regardless of how shit they turn out to be.

Anyway, he ended up back at Leicester when a new board took over, eventually got them back into the Premier League and despite being in the bottom three for most of the season has recently led them on a run of form that has got them up to 15th and won him the Manager of the Month award for April. Which is a brilliant achievement. Only, it's now got to the stage where Pearson could win the Champions League and focus groups would still immediately shout "Scary flat-top weirdo!" if presented with a photo of him. An extended version of this point was made to him recently during an eye-gougingly excruciating seven-minute back-and-forth with the BBC's Pat Murphy, an exchange charged with so much slow-burning contempt that both men would be up for Olivier Awards if they'd done it on stage at the Donmar Warehouse.

"I have terrible moods. I can be quite intense. People have said that I'm rude, that I can blank people," he has said. "But I just haven't seen them because I'm concentrating. I'm actually a very sensitive bloke really."

Obviously we can all relate to that familiar sensation of temporarily losing our sense of sight because we're concentrating so much. But actually, that stuff about being sensitive I can buy. I think he does care what people – particularly the media – think, which is one reason why he spends so much time saying that he doesn't care what people think. In 2012, he went after Sky Sports pundit Peter Beagrie for simply suggesting on air that a referee was right to have given a penalty against his team. "He is an overpaid punter," said Pearson. "He is clueless." I mean… who fucking cares what some co-commentator said about some penalty decision? And who then singles them out for abuse? I'll tell you who: Nigel Pearson. The whole weird "ostrich" press conference thing is too complicated to fully explain here, suffice to say it included this rant at a junior reporter who accidentally pissed him off: "Your head must be in the sand. Is your head in the sand? Are you flexible enough to get your head in the sand? My suspicion would be no. I can, you can't."

Just so we're clear, Pearson seems to be showing off about being physically capable of putting his head some sand if he had to. In terms of brags, it's up there with Chris Finch from The Office claiming he can throw a shoe over a building.

Actually, the Finchy comparison isn't a bad one. If any Premier League manager is going to tell you they read a book a week or use the phrase "university of life, mate", you know it would be Pearson.

And yet, he cannot be all bad. For one thing, his players generally seem to really like him. In fact, part of the reason he gets into so many arguments with people is that he seems to be incredibly defensive of his charges. "The Nigel Pearson you see and the Nigel Pearson we see are two very different people," is how Leicester goalie Kasper Schmeichel puts it. "He's a bright, bubbly guy."

"He knows what he's doing," said Lineker after the pair had patched up their differences. "Yes, he's a little bit weird at times. A little bit odd."

In an earlier column, I suggested that Pearson was like a policeman who had married your mum and then transformed your bedroom into his Tae Bo workout zone. And, on reflection, yeah, I'm still pretty happy with that. But as an addendum, I would suggest that it's possible that, over time, the two of you could perhaps learn to accept one another. Not be mates or anything, but just reach a cautious understanding. Maybe you'll start to appreciate why he is the way he is, and maybe he'll stop making so many creepy boasts about his physical flexibility. And who knows? Perhaps one day you'll stop being so frightened of him. Perhaps one day you can go on holiday together and beat the fuck out of some wild dogs.

Originally published by VICE.com