In a State of Limbo

Nigel Pearson leaves Bristol City in a state of limbo and uncertainty and poses obvious question
Bristol City fan columnist Math Withers breaks down the 3-2 defeat to Coventry City and what it means for the club moving forward

In they filed, in small groups of 3-4, all clutching their phones and holding conversations along similar lines: “have you seen this?”, “it’s all my City mates, I’ve been getting it all afternoon”, “look, here’s another”, “It’s ridiculous, just constant messages”, and phrases of a similar nature uttered as they chuckled and made their way up the stairs at the Robins High Performance Centre.

As well as a training ground, the site at Failand has been designed as a headquarters for the club, across all aspects, and upon its opening the Robins hierarchy were keen to promote its role in the pathway from academy to first-team, with players training, learning and working at the same facility.

It is something of a haven from the “real world”, designed as a sanctuary of sorts and a structure for collective thought and adherence to a certain process and culture, to prevent any outside noise affecting performance and decision-making.

On Monday lunchtime, seemingly every Bristol City fan with an internet connection was riddled with a mixture of adrenaline and insatiable hunger for a sliver of information, however speculative, as a social media storm gather ferocity into the early afternoon.

Nigel Pearson was stepping down and an announcement was imminent with a press conference called later that afternoon.

But for the staff inside the HPC, including the academy players as referenced in the opening paragraph, and the first-teamers who had trained earlier that morning, they were either the last to know among anyone of a red and white persuasion or were doing a very good job at projecting a mixture of confusion, disinterest and exasperation.

Certainly for such a seismic event to be on the horizon, the atmosphere at the daily place of work for most regular City employees was one of complete normality. It simply wasn’t registering beyond WhatsApp pings and social media mentions.

Meanwhile on Twitter, as everyone was going about their daily business in BS8, a cursory search of “Nigel Pearson” delivered a constant stream of updates, theories and debates about what should happen next.

The juxtaposition was jarring.

It proved purely coincidental in the context of what erupted, in a digital sense, on Monday afternoon but Richard Gould’s decision to front up as the face of the board and the club following Saturday’s demoralising defeat to Coventry has only heightened emotions.

Media interviews were arranged on Sunday morning as part of the CEO’s desire to increase visibility, communication and therefore accountability at times of adversity, but that then helped fuel the narrative that some kind of announcement was due 24 hours later.

Without any knowledge of how such a rumour started, it rather ironically could have been the original spark when fed into the context of Pearson’s situation, results and that strange news void that coincides with the international break.

Just as a very haphazard process of investigation: confirmation of Gould’s appearance on BBC Radio Bristol’s Sound of the City was made public on Twitter at 12:01pm. At around 1:00pm a thread was started on the One Team in Bristol forum stating a press conference had been called and then, very quickly in a short 10-minute period from around 1:40pm, Bristol Live (and no doubt you) received a flurry of messages from enquiring friends and acquaintances.

The WhatsApp cat was out of the bag, and as Richard Gould found out a few hours later, it’s very hard to put the wrigglesome feline back in there.

Granted, the CEO’s interview to BBC Radio Bristol and the quote “that’s what we want” in relation to the question from Geoff Twentyman over, "categorically", whether Pearson will be returning, has left a lingering sense that someone in the dark and distant, occasionally intergalactic, recesses of spurious football gossip, was telling the truth in some way, shape or form.

But, let us look at the facts: Pearson is clearly not well and, by all accounts, hasn’t been 100 per cent for much of the season. There isn't really much more that can be said to fill the void and desire for information.

The decision for him not to travel to Coventry was a little surprising given he had spoken to the media, albeit via Zoom 24 hours earlier and conducted team meetings with the players; and these were important ones at that given how abruptly captain Dan Bentley fled his press conference at the realisation he was running late for it, barely having time to get his apology out.

Although the club statement on Friday afternoon said he was rather vaguely “feeling unwell”, both assistant Curtis Fleming and Gould have stated he’s not in a particularly strong state of health, and having witnessed both those accounts in person, they’ve been said with real concern, while also carefully choosing their words out of respect for Pearson.

Without wanting to delve into a man’s medical history, he has contracted Covid twice in the last two years and the first bout was particularly debilitating for him. So much so, that part of City’s due diligence when offering him the job was to ascertain he was well enough to perform what is a gruelling and high-pressured job.

Pearson, as you may have guessed, is not the sort of individual to advertise any perceived weakness (not that it should be branded that but we’re talking perceptions here, especially in such an alpha industry as football) nor dwell on it. He’s a stoic character who just wants to get on with life.

He’s quite obviously not been able to do that to the level he expects and, as Gould alluded to, it has been a contributing factor to the club’s poor run of results. It may be a little distasteful but in the eight matches since he first left the club City have won two and lost six; the eight prior to his absence was three wins, three draws and two defeats.

Now that’s pretty much what we do know and should be permitted to know really, given a person’s right to privacy and confidentiality surrounding medical conditions. And therein lies the real truth of this whole scenario – nobody really knows what happens next. At least not yet, anyway.

City have allowed Pearson at least this week off, during the international break, to rest, recover and hopefully recuperate but it’s a situation that will be monitored accordingly. They know in the here and now that he’s not fit for work, but not what the news might bring tomorrow, or Thursday or Friday.

Likewise, from Pearson’s point of view, he can’t forecast how well he’s going to be in one, two or three weeks; few people can with anything, bar everyday ailments like headaches and sickness bugs. Even the common cold can be a bugger to shift, and stick around for a few weeks.

Covid-19 and the collateral impact of that is far more serious and considerably more unpredictable. Yes, a prognosis and time for recovery can be estimated but, as it stands, that simply hasn’t been made yet.

How do we know that? Well, if it had a decision would have been reached by now. If it was absolutely crystal clear, or at least to the relevant medical equivalent of that term, that Pearson would need months rather than weeks to recover, City would most likely be looking for a new manager by now.

The fact of the matter is, and here comes a Mark Ashton favourite, the situation is “fluid” and because of that nobody wants to make a snap decision that could be detrimental to anyone concerned.

City gave Pearson a three-year contract for a reason. They believe, and continue to despite this recent decline, that he was the best candidate at the time to fulfil their aims of becoming a promotion challenger over the space of that time period, and hopefully beyond.

Time, money, emotion and work has gone into that project and conjecture and uncertainty, in the short term at least, over when he might return isn’t going to cause that project to be abandoned until it absolutely needs to be.

Of course, there is a timeframe and, speaking purely hypothetically, if he were to miss the next batch of games in the build-up to Christmas and results to continue the recent trend, it surely brings the situation to a head.

City must weigh up the balance between giving Pearson the maximum amount of time required for him to return healthy, while not allowing this state of limbo to prove too detrimental to all concerned. They have a responsibility as an employer to do that.

What’s the alternative? “Bring in Neil Warnock until the end of the season”. Is that the same Neil Warnock famously undemanding in the transfer market who’ll happily work and coach with someone else’s players?

Any new coach can’t really be an interim until Pearson’s situation is more defined. Until then, the Robins are wedded to what their manager wants, and vice versa.

The caveat is Pearson himself, of course. Who has been in football for 40 years, achieved a considerable amount and is very much is own man with, as anyone has witnessed them filtering out on a matchday, a large family whose priorities are not solving the riddle of whether City perform best with or without Callum O’Dowda in the starting XI. Really, when you assess all the factors, the ball is completely in his court.

But in the confines of the Robins High Performance Centre the feeling is very much that time, at this stage of the season, is available and needed before the right decision can be made, for everyone’s sake. Which poses the obvious question: how much time is too much?

That also is very much an open-ended answer because, such is football, results can change the dynamic of any given situation.

We can make a guess based on what we think or what we want to think, but that’s still only scratching the surface of the actual reality; paramount in medicine which, contrary to your slightly dodgy mate’s favourite Facebook group, deals in absolute fact and evidence.

The truth is, at this moment in time, we simply don’t know. And that, in itself, can be a difficult concept to grasp.

https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/sport/football/nigel-pearson-bristol-city-6179327

 

Do we hope, sweat, continue to suffer and await recovery for both Nige and our club, should we take decisive action, pay him off and get an experienced man in ASAP or do a Bristol City normal, dither and wither on the sidelines, with the big R in the background, it's all up to the man in the Channel Islands.

 

Nigel Pearson: No date on return from illness for Bristol City boss
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/59218618