Ever since the departure of the great Martin O’Neill Leicester have struggled to find a manager who can bring back the glory days we experienced under his reign.
Since O’Neill we have had a further nine official managers in as many years and none of them have achieved anything like his success. Micky Adams proved a good servant to the club winning us automatic promotion in 2003 but only for us to come crashing back down the following year. We have had steady managers but no one who has looked like they could rekindle the O’Neil form and again sustain us to being a solid Premiership team.
To call some of the managers steady as well is being generous as their records suggest that they did more bad then good for the club. A good example would be Ian Holloway who infamously got us relegated in 2008, for the first time in our history into the third tier of football.
However with all that said have we finally found our man who can get us back on track and back into the top tier of English football, where we so rightly deserve to be? Have we finally found a man who can relive the glory days once experienced under O’Neil? Would it be possible to conceive the thought that after nine years of searching we have finally found our new messiah? Ladies and gentleman I present to you Mr Nigel Pearson.
At first glance he is just your average 46 year old man, standing at six foot one and whose hair is gradually turning grey. Yet behind his extremely relaxed persona lies a man who at every club he has managed has made a positive impact. Leicester are only the third club he has officially managed having previously been at Carlisle and Southampton, however he has made lasting impressions at both of those other clubs. Not only did he manage to save Carlisle from relegation in 1999, he then went on to do exactly the same for Southampton in 2008 (which ironically got us relegated.)
If ever you have listened to Pearson being interviewed admittedly he does not come across as the most charismatic man in football and when you see him nor does he necessarily look the part. Nevertheless there must be something about him that inspired his Leicester City side of 2008-09 to score more goals then any other team in all four English leagues. Not only that but he was the first manager to turn the Walkers Stadium into a fortress and lost only one match there in his first season in charge. That season Leicester went on to score 96 points, more then they have in any other season and ended it with a staggering +45 goal difference.
After such a great season having crowned Leicester as league one champions the big question was; could he continue their great form in the Championship? The answer so far, is an indisputable yes. Having played 16 and only lost three, Leicester are currently sitting in a more than respectable 6th position, just inside the play-offs.
Pearson is already aware of how it feels to be part of a team that wins this division having won promotion with Middlesbrough in 1995. Will he now be able to go one step further and lead a team to promotion from this division and complete the Leicester City Revival?
Since taking over as manager at Leicester in June 2008, Pearson has already been nominated for manager of the month an astounding five times, winning the award twice. Since Leicester last returned to the Championship in 2004 only one manager has won a manager of the month award, and that was Rob Kelly in March 2006. Pearson will soon be looking to change that though having already received a nomination for Championship manager of the month in October.
‘In Pearson we trust’ is the message echoed by the fans who are confident that if anybody has the ability to get us back to the Premiership, this is the man to do it. It seems to have been a long time since we were in the top tier of English football, but at last things seem to be looking up as Pearson continues his impressive tenure.
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