Is "Psycho" the sanest manager in football?

mike65

Every time I hear or read something from Stuart Pearce I'm convinced he's the best manager in the business when it comes to everything except the actual game (and he'll get better at that too)!

From the Times

Stuart Pearce was talking to a player recently when he posed what was intended as a rhetorical question. “I said: ‘What would you rather have, a Ferrari or an England cap.’ And they said: ‘Well definitely a Ferrari because they’re fantastic, aren’t they?” the Manchester City manager recalled with horror, shaking his head at the incredulity of it all.

Pearce offered the anecdote as he reflected on the decision of Lucas Neill, the Blackburn Rovers defender, to turn down Liverpool in favour of a more lucrative offer from West Ham United. He did not wish to portray Neill as the epitome of everything that is bad in modern football — perhaps not least because, with that deal on hold last night, there remained an outside chance that the Australian could play against City for Blackburn tomorrow tea-time but he suggested that decision was endemic of a recent shift in priorities among players.

“If I was a player, my main criteria would be going where the football was going to be best for me — full stop,” the former England captain, who spent 12 years with Nottingham Forest as a player, said. “Wages are irrelevant. That’s why I stayed with Forest, that’s why I decided to go to Newcastle and so on, irrespective of wages, and that will probably follow me into management as well.

“What I would say to any given player is, if you have to leave a club, go for footballing reasons only. Football was the main rider for me and it always will be. I find it a little bit difficult to understand, especially when you look at the figures we’re talking about.

We’re not talking about the difference between poverty and extreme wealth. We’re talking about extreme wealth to extreme wealth, so there isn’t a great deal of contrast.

“I can’t say what governs one individual to pick one club above another. It’s not my business to do so. All I can do is, when any of my players come through the door and ask advice, I would urge to them to play their football wherever they deem it to be best for them for footballing reasons. And to be fair, two of my young players [Joey Barton and Micah Richards] have come out this week and said that, for footballing reasons, they want to be playing football here.”

Pearce may be among the youngest of the 20 Barclays Premiership managers, but his eagerness to embrace old-school values and speak out against less edifying recent trends, even if it means castigating one of his own players for diving, has won him many admirers this season. It is less than five years since he kicked his last ball — or opposition winger — as a player, but, for the 44-year-old, it feels like it was another lifetime. A senior player by the time wages began to soar in the mid-1990s, he has no issue with the amount of money today’s players earn, but he is dismayed by the erosion of the competitive edge by greed. Of the wannabe Ferrari owner, not necessarily a City player, he shook his head and uttered: “That is just alien to me.”

At risk of alienating supporters of his own club, the City manager identified a Manchester United player, Paul Scholes, as a paragon of the virtues that too many of today’s younger players have forgotten.

“If you look across the road to the likes of Scholesy, he’s a shining light to any young aspiring footballer,” Pearce said. “Play football, concentrate on what you’re doing, look after your family, keep your head down and your mouth shut. And that’s all Paul Scholes does. And if I was the chief executive of the PFA, I would say Paul Scholes is the standard-bearer for everything a footballer should stand for.”

Legend!

Mike.

MrJoeSoap

Definite legend. Always tells it like it is and isn't afraid to come out against his own players.

Although I'm not sure about "sanest" given the whole beenie affair...

ziggy

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dr.bollocko

Week in week out he always comes up with some of the funniest straight up quotes for the press. I like his attitude and he knows his stuff... to some extent... Wonder what he will have amassed in ten years time.

Big Ears

Have to agree . Pearce doesn't just throw out Clichés(well as much as other managers) and avoid difficult questions by rabbling on for a while about something totally different .

Condemning Corradi for diving was refreshing and a lot better for the game than a response of 'I didn't see it'/excuse as to why he 'fell' or 'lost balance' .

Pigman II

Psycho is a new breed of manager. Reasonable, principled and unbiased. He hasn't got a chance.

andrew1977

From saturdays daily mirror , city had an unknown trialist training with them last night , the trialist said to the press that he was was good as Man Uniteds Ronaldo
Stuart Pearces reply when he heard this " Well we wont be long knocking those ideas out of him " ..Class