Nigel Pearson - Sacked

Just listened to his interview on Ornstein and Chapman. He actually states that Gino and SD were at the training ground during the West Ham match, so he didn't even see them until he met them in the training ground car park the next day. So there was no confrontation with anyone at board level at half time or after the match because they weren't even there.

I believe he was in a rage at half time with the players, maybe squared up to one or two and probably someone like Giraldi was witness to it and reported it back to the board. When SD said "you have to trust us" when talking about the dismissal, he's probably alluding to Pearson's loss of temper with the players at half time, which they heard second-hand, but nothing more than that.

The more the stories come out, the more it looks like the board made a kneejerk decision based on emotion rather than logic. The reason to sack Pearson was, at the time, a strange one, and hindsight proved it to be a bad one.

Stories like punching Gino, Masina or whoever, never happened.

 

You don't know what happened and nobody will ever know unless there is some kind of court action instigated by either side, it's the clubs word against his so it's a case of who you believe at the end of the day.

 

Maybe, the issue with that is how he states he got on well with Giraldi and still speaks to him even now.

Of course, he may not know it was Giraldi who ‘grassed’ but if he had any suspicion it would be strange for him to remain friends with him.

 

Sorry guys, I'm choosing to continue believing that Pearson lamped Masina at half time as it makes for a much richer Watford mythology. Nothing can change my mind at this point.

 

Of course, that's just speculation on who told the board about the incident. Maybe it was one of the players who didn't like being picked on at half time and reported it. They would certainly have gone to Giraldi to have this confirmed though, even if he didn't originally spill the beans.

I think the sacking was not entirely based around how he conducted himself at half time, as what I've heard from players and people in and around it, in dribs and drabs, it doesn't sound like anything massively out of order or OTT went on.

What I think the real truth was, Gino didn't like the form of the side post-lockdown. In fact I think Pearson would have gone had we lost to Norwich. The half time bust up, was the final straw and they were looking for a reason to dismiss him.

 

I believe the injuries sustained were so horrendous that Masina has been unable to play since and is refusing to play for us again and so will leave in January. At least that's what I'm hearing.

 

Gino could have sacked Pearson at half time against West Ham and it would've been justified. That 'performance' alone was worthy of the sack.

 

Ultimately, he failed.

Fantastic Christmas run, sure. But after lockdown we had the chance to take stock and form an effective survival plan.

We conceded first in every single match, despite having more favourable fixtures than our rivals.

I personally lay a lot of the blame at the feet of our wantaway players but the manager always takes the fall.

I liked him and Craig Shakespeare and the Liverpool game was wonderful. Hope he gets the Sheffield job because he's better than a lot of the merry-go-round managers.

 

Weirdly his reign was very similar to Silva at Hull. Took over what looked like a seemingly doomed situation, did amazingly well to get them in with a fighting chance, but then blew the easy part against weaker teams.

 

Also Carlos Carvalhal at Swansea the season they went down after doing a **** Turpin on us and beating Liverpool and Arsenal.

 

It seemed pretty obvious that the club as a whole were totally unready to do what was necessary during the restart period. Manager, players, hierarchy....none of them wanted the season to be completed & that point was proven by the total lack of commitment shown in the games.

 

Looking at the table after we’d just beaten Newcastle, even with the benefit of hindsight, it still difficult to believe both Villa and Bournemouth over took us:

Premier League table after close of play on 11 July 2020
Pos Team Pld W D L GF GA GD Pts
1 Liverpool 35 30 3 2 76 27 49 93
2 Manchester City 35 23 3 9 91 34 57 72
3 Chelsea 35 18 6 11 63 49 14 60
4 Leicester City 34 17 8 9 64 32 32 59
5 Manchester United 34 16 10 8 59 33 26 58
6 Sheffield United 35 14 12 9 38 33 5 54
7 Wolverhampton Wanderers 34 13 13 8 45 37 8 52
8 Arsenal 34 12 14 8 50 42 8 50
9 Burnley 35 14 8 13 39 47 -8 50
10 Tottenham Hotspur 34 13 10 11 52 44 8 49
11 Everton 34 12 9 13 41 49 -8 45
12 Southampton 34 13 5 16 43 56 -13 44
13 Newcastle United 35 11 10 14 36 52 -16 43
14 Crystal Palace 34 11 9 14 30 43 -13 42
15 Brighton and Hove Albion 35 8 12 15 36 52 -16 36
16 West Ham United 35 9 7 19 44 59 -15 34
17 Watford 35 8 10 17 33 54 -21 34
18 AFC Bournemouth 34 7 7 20 32 59 -27 28
19 Aston Villa 34 7 6 21 36 65 -29 27
20 Norwich City 35 5 6 24 26 67 -41 21

 

Might be a daft question, but is it possible that at least some of the players had CV19, leading to the flatness of the performances?

 

We should have expected Villa to win their home game against a mediocre Palace side in end-of-season mode so the seven point gap was deceptive. What I imagine virtually none of us expected was Villa to get seven more points with the tough fixtures they had left, or Bournemouth to get the results they did (4-1 vs Leicester, a narrow loss at a Man City who’d been hammering everyone else for fun, and 3-1 at Everton).

 

We knew we needed to be safe with 2 games to go given the last 2 games. Unfortunately we weren't. Having said that, the performances by Leicester and Everton (and even MC) vs Bournemouth were disgraceful as were CP & Arsenal's performances vs AV. None of those teams gave a damn about their results.

 

I'd be very surprised if Gino Pozzo wasn't at the West Ham game. I even think I remember him being shown on Sky in the stands?! He's at pretty much all our games.

 

Apparently has said the past he won't take the Sheffield Wednesday job because his family are still all based in the city and wouldn't want to put that on them if it turned sour.

 

I was surprised too, but that's what he said. Maybe because of the Covid restrictions he didn't go? That game was shown live, so I'm sure they would have panned on Pozzo towards half time in order to see him shaking his head. I don't recall that, but if anyone still has that game saved they could check that out. It certainly would clear up a few things, and whether Pearson is either mistaken or correct about board members being at the game.

 

Sheffield Wednesday fans quite in favour of him going by this thread...

https://www.owlstalk.co.uk/forums/topic/294430-what-do-you-want-in-our-next-manager/

Seem unaware of or prepared to overlook the drastic drop in form and performances of the team post-lockdown.

 

Going by his recent interview, he's not well enough to return to work. I'd be very surprised if he or Wednesday would consider the timing to be right.

 

He said that in one of the first interviews, by the end he was saying he was ready for a new challenge.

 

Horse riding, wasn't it?

 

It’s only a matter of time before somebody watches the entire WHU game to see if Gino was in the crowd.

I’m not offering by the way.