France, when I was but eighteen and at Tewkesbury held the flank in Edward’s name, and so did help to place him ’pon the throne. I was a bold and active general in the field. Not fleet of foot like Jamie V, of course, yet not lightly to be dismissed upon a horse (a horse, my kingdom for … Never said it, by the way. That preening Stratford ponce sticking words in my mouth again).
My purpose here is not to glorify myself, for narcissism is not the prince’s way (it is, in fact, but grant me some poetic licence if you will). ’Tis to impress on you that war is much the same, in spirit if not toll of blood and limb, whether fought with vicious sword or round white ball.
In football, as in wartime long ago, the days of peace between the battles are short. And in those times of rest that pass so quick, when the sea looks most tranquil and becalmed, know well how soon ’twill surge to make you sick.
Even thus it was at Leicester City after the miracle pursuant upon my cathedral interment. When concluded the 2014–15 season, the skies looked blue and bright for Nigel Pearson, regaled as our messiah in glorious May.
You might have thought those skies set fair for him, that years of grace for him did lie in wait. How foolish you’d have been if thought you that. How soon the broody, portentous clouds re-formed.
Now, Nige is not an easy man to love, to those who know him only from afar. Close-up, he’s a diamond geezer – couldn’t wish for a nicer guy – but few other than his boys get close.
Intemperate when irked he often is, while irked he all too easily seems to be. You recall that February day as relegation loomed, when he placed his mitts around a Palace player’s throat? Other eruptions from him there came besides, as happens when the pressure sorely mounts. Let this alone give flavour of his wrath.
After that 1–3 loss to Chelsea’s champions elect – the lone defeat in nine post-burial games (just sayin’) – off he went on one in conclave with press hacks. It’s there on YouTube if you have time to spare. If not, swift told, he had a fearful rant, fixing a scribe with blazing eye, humiliating the wretch before his peers, taunting him for ‘ostrich’ with head in sand.
Such forthright tongue ill served him with the board, with whom relations had quite awhile been strained. If Nige was already on borrowed time, the fatal loan was truly pound of flesh, for ’twas supplied by his own flesh and blood – ’twas James his son who unwitting wielded the axe.
Yet, hard as ’tis to raise a boy child to manhood, managing a football club is harder.
For to be head coach is to be king, and yet not king. You rule the dressing room, aye, yet another, higher tyrant commands you. Even as the Kings of England once, before bawdy Henry VIII broke the chains, did shiver in the shadow of the Pope.
For ’tis chairman of the club who stands supreme, whose thumb doth rise and fall to seal your fate. And Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha’s did for Pearson’s doom descend, after the ill-fated club tour to his homeland in the east.
We will linger not upon this tale, for an acrid taste it leaves upon the tongue. ’Tis written in the Mirror and the Sun (though not the stars, for stellar it was not), so waits online for those who would know more.
One night in June in Vichai’s Thai hotel (also King Power by name, and in Bangkok), Pearson’s son and others did themselves debase. A trinity of hookers in their teens were ushered to chamber of the bed there to disrobe, then sinuously they did dance for lascivious eyes, and engage in sexing sport betwixt themselves, while James and his two friends did leering watch.
’Twould alone have been enough to cause a stink, for encaptur’d all this was on camera phone. Yet compounded was their sin by manyfold, for they did verbally abuse those dancing girls, with words about the slanting of their eyes, as Edinburgh’s Duke did speak in China once, though without the Duke’s misplaced attempt at wit.
For Vichai and Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha, not merely chairman’s son but his vice chair too, such vice could not imaginably be borne. For they those recent years had worked to increase the traffic of vacationers to their native land, and so the local purse enrich with ‘goodwill tours’, though no prey did this goodwill hunting run to ground.
’Twas on the 17th day of June that Srivaddhanaprabha patience did expire, and the boy Pearson and the other pair – players at the club, like James, till then – were from Leicester City’s books expunged.
How often in myth and history do we find a son raining grief upon his father’s name? With the crapulous word-whore Shakespeare ’twas quite a theme, and also with Dr Freud who looked at minds, though mothers and sons seemed more to Sigmund’s taste, like Oedipus who Laius at crossroads slew, and in ignorance gave his mum Jocasta a seeing-to.
My own father in truth I barely knew, for he died when I was eight. Probably as well. I’m not saying I’d have done him, as tiny Caligula dispatched noble Germanicus to the underworld. But to be fair – or put another way, in all fairness – you can’t rule it out.
And what of Edward, eighth of his name to sit upon England’s throne, Nazi manqué, traitor king, who broke George V’s heart by frolicking with Maryland’s strumpet of whom ’twas said she learned such nether-region tricks in those same bawdy houses of Orient whence our Thai dancing girls did come?
And did you ever see Thor, a favourite movie of mine I must confess (loved that flying hammer! Could’ve done with that at Bosworth), wherein the thunder god did Odin sore distress by warring with the Frost Giants in defiance of the Asgardian sovereign’s will.
Boys shalt be boys, or so we used to say, and thus it was in covert days of yore. But in the age of videocamera phone, which captureth the image as it moves, boys at their grave peril be boys, and oft times at the peril of their dads.
Once James Pearson was from the King Power flung, the writing for his sire was ’pon the wall, though perhaps it had been there already a little while, in pencil scrawled if not by inky quill. For Nigel would not lightly kiss the ring, so thus displeased the owners from Siam, or so at least it feels safe to assume.
While the cliché holds it be the case, that for yes-men the powerful hold contempt, the truth could not be more to the obverse. ’Tis sycophants we rulers value most, and those who dare say nay to us we hate. A little life lesson there for you office folk. Make thy tongues as brown as the pelt of a deer roaming the forest in autumn if thou wouldst get on.
With James’s dismissal the final straw did come, and on 30 June a club statement issued forth. I quoth the proclamation here verbatim, a touch précis’d only for concision:
Regrettably, the club believes that the working relationship between Nigel and the board is no longer viable. It has become clear that fundamental differences in perspective exist between us … We trust that the supporters will recognise that the owners have always acted with the best interests of the club at heart and with the long-term future as their greatest priority.
This trust of which they spoke was pure phantasm, the fans recognising no such noble intent. To them, ’twas folly to dispense with he who so lately the bonds of hope from doom had forged, and brought on players – our most beloved Vardy, the subtle Mahrez, brave Morgan at the back, those stout English yeomen Albrighton and Drinkwater, whom I would have had at my side at Tewkesbury, and more; to each and every one we’ll shortly come – who would ere long be the darlings of the league.
But hark, who comest now with heart in which wrath and rage be aflicker?
Why, it’s our onetime Foxes golden boy, the crisp salesman Gary Lineker.
The mellow Lineker had ne’er been so cross since Graham Taylor took him off in that game when he was but one shy of Bobby Charlton’s scoring record of forty-nine England goals. Yet at eventide of 30 June, when Pearson’s demise had barely yet sunk in, he did tweet forth like an outraged sparrow – and not once, but in quick succession twice.
Gary Lineker
@GaryLineker
Leicester City have sacked