PM – 30 Jun 2015
Gary Lineker
@GaryLineker
Getting LCFC promoted and the greatest escape ever, Pearson is sacked? Are the folk running football stupid? Yes
8:05 PM – 30 Jun 2015
Stupid is as stupid doth, as Mother Gump observed. Reflecting with the hindsight fools revere, though ’tis to wisdom as iron pyrites is to gold, Lineker looks the stupid one today. Yet I would not affect to have felt other than he that day.
WTF? I too thought to myself. (Even though I do LOL at the recollection now!) Why hast thou dispensed with Nige, and who in devil’s name will coach us now?
Now, any managerial hiring is like a box of chocolates. Never do you know what you’re gonna get. Unless you hire Steve McClaren. Then you know exactly what you’re gonna get. Otherwise ’tis a gamble, even as throwing a die three times upon the ground, and hoping each time to see a six.
Yet for too long in this vexing case, the board knew not who they were gonna get.
The brief hiatus between old and new season is an evil time to be bereft of helmsman. War has its close season too, of course, and its transfer window when generals barter for fresh troops.
E’en thus it was when I led white-ros’d York,
Fearing defection by soldiers with tongues of fork,
Who might switch from white to foul Lancastrian red –
As Sol Campbell, traitor, left Spurs for Arsenal’s bed.
The point, my friends, is this. There are players to be sold, players to be loaned in and out, players to be purchas’d from all corners of the world … It’s a vital time. You can’t afford to be without a boss in the close season. That’s mental.
With Pearson gone, the Foxes had no boss, though many names were touted for the berth. Sean Dyche of Burnley contended early doors, as did David Moyes who to balmy Sociedad had repaired after being impaled by Manchester United sword (mutual consent my Plantagenet arse).
Many wished that Martin O’Neill, a Foxes manager before, like Pearson be given a second crack. Sam Allardyce was also in the lists, howe’er he be too portly for the joust. So too was Harry Redknapp, from whose eyes shines gospel truth. Yet he had departed QPR but a few months before, citing arthritic soreness in his knee as cause of that, and not the Superhoops’ most grievous form, which saw them finish in last place, the twentieth spot not long before earmarked for us. And though Honest Hal did disavow that lame excuse, and claimed that others advanced it unbeknownst to him, even as Shakespeare bestowed false cripplehood on me, the damage to his chances was surely done.
More besides were rumoured for the job, such as Neil Lennon with hair the fading red of flame, and cherubic Eddie Howe who at plucky Bournemouth prospers yet. But whosoe’er was touted was flouted by the board, until Foxes fans muttered in despair, ‘Lord have mercy, not Sven-Göran Eriksson again.’
And when at last the choice of boss was made, and the new gaffer was in midst July revealed, ’twas a name that had been spoken of by none.
So great was the shock, the ague did take hold, and tongues that would speak out in rage were stilled, though ’twould be not long ere power of speech returned, and angry birds such as Lineker to Twitter turned.
And this was the consensus when they did, to paraphrase a little if I might.
Oh Jesus wept, no. Not the fucking Tinkerman.
III
When raised up to the throne by head of steam,
First test for a new king is e’er the same,
Be he monarch or coach in the beautiful game:
Stick glue-like to what is? Or change regime?
Such was the quandary for Claudio Ranieri when he filled the Pearson void. A Roman, soft-spoken, antidote to poison of Mourinho, whose raving paranoia did at Chelsea once replace his gentle tone.
What was he to do, this incoming boss? Replace incumbent backroom staff with loyal lieutenants of his own? Clear out existing players whose obeisance lay in doubt, hiring mercenaries to his taste from far and wide? Or shun revolution’s lure in stability’s name, and wait a while to see what need be done?
’Tis by and large the neophyte ruler’s way to erase all that before him was, the easier to stamp his image ’pon blank page. And not just in football, come to that. In each and every field ’tis much the same.
Now, take the eighthwit George Walker (President) Bush, chief warlord of the States for eight troubled years. When he did from power remove Saddam Hussein, that Mesopotamian tyrant of bushy ’tache, he and those who yanked Dubya’s strings this way and that – Cheney, Rumsfeld, other gangsters of that ilk – did act as arrogant men are fain to do.
They cast the Ba’athists from their crucial task managing that wretch’d strife-torn land, and thus pernicious vacuum did create. Nature abhorring such, it soon was filled, with civil war between Sunni and Shia (who did not serenade the other with love, as near namesakes Sonny and Cher did of yore), and also emboldening that harsh neighbour Iran, until turmoil over the whole region ran amok.
Such monstrous seeds were sown by folly of Bush – aye, and of his grinning, pliant bondsman Tony Blair – that we see a hideous harvest ripening still. All for want of retaining a regime, to stabilise the post-invasion scene.
Ranieri was more sagacious, as we’ll see, and perchance therein lay seeds of his success. But before we come to that and other things, a word or two about the cruel greetings that his appointment as Leicester City coach drew forth.
Yon Lineker, of whom we spoke above, did once again give vent to carping chirp, on Twitter where angry birds do flock. ‘Claudio Ranieri is clearly experienced,’ he piously opined, ‘but this is an uninspired choice.’ Again his grave mistake I can’t condemn, or pretend that I thought otherwise on the day, which was to be exact 13 July. For the hiring did seem as ill-omened as men believe the number thirteen doth portend.
No soothsayer alive was so preposterous skill’d to say the sooth that would later be revealed, as the 2015–16 season began to be unveiled.
For who that gazed into their crystal ball, and sighted Leicester proud atop the league, would not have dashed that ball onto stone floor, smashing it to myriad smithereens, chastising it for rascally orb of glass, which bore false witness to make its owner look an arse?
No one saw this coming, is my point. Not Lineker, not Claudio, not I.
Experienc’d he truly was, as Lineker said, though much of that lay in taking second place, and more in taking leave with pay-off cheque. Seven times already had he been discharged, and thrice resigned himself, and never in all those jobs a single title won.
At Chelsea in tranquil time before Mourinho came, to rain madness and silverware on Stamford Bridge in equal part, Ranieri three and a half years as coach had spent. His last season encapsulates the gist, with Chelsea runner-up in League and also Cup, in both the prize by but a whisker missed.
Hence ‘Nearly Man’ was one of his nicknames, with ‘Tinkerman’ the other sobriquet, for his penchant for e’er rotating his squad, and being unable his best eleven to say. Seldom twice on the bounce the same side did he pick, though by and by that habit would he break.
To his Chelsea stint a Croesus brought an end, the oligarch Abramovich by name, a Roman yet no Roman like Ranieri he, but came from the vast wastes of Russia’s icy steppe. Great treasure had he found in mysterious way, after into the abyss the Soviets collapsed. He spent a portion of his gold to buy the Blues, and more – much more – to make them glister