Pearson must go! Why Leicester need to dump troubled gaffer

It’s clear from the comments of Ian Prior, head of sport at The Guardian, that somebody at Leicester leaked news regarding the sacking of Nigel Pearson on Sunday, before what seemed like a ‘decision’ was changed.

Papers often fall for ‘stunning u-turns’ but don’t think I’ve ever seen a story strongly sourced as Pearson sacking be reversed so quickly

— Ian Prior (@ianprior) February 9, 2015

Even Sky Sports were ‘fooled’; indeed, Ed Chamberlin, Jamie Carragher and Dwight Yorke came to the odd conclusion that a tough set of fixtures ahead prompted the Foxes board to move now.

No mention was made of Pearson’s bizarrely-thuggish borderline assault on Crystal Palace’s James McArthur in Leicester’s 1-0 loss at home to Crystal Palace, nor his equally odd and unsatisfactory explanation on Match of the Day.

Whether the granite-hewn former centre-half could look after himself, as Pearson asserted, against relatively-lithe midfielder McArthur was never in question.

This isn’t the first time since the Foxes’ promotion that Pearson has acted out, having sworn at a fan and telling them ‘to die’ in the 2-1 loss at Aston Villa before Xmas, for which he received a one-game ban.

Remarkably, it seems the former Sheffield Wednesday stalwart will escape punishment for the incident with McArthur, after referee Lee Mason failed to include it in his match report.

There’s not much to recommend Pearson at the moment; his Premier League basement dwellers may have claimed seven points from their past six games, but they’ve been beaten 14 times in 19 top-flight outings since the end of September.

They’re bang out of form again too, with three losses on the spin racked up, two of them at home to Stoke and Palace, who are currently tenth or lower in the table, and on the road against a Manchester United side playing worse than their fourth place suggests at present.

Leicester’s next six scheduled fixtures in the division are Arsenal (A), Everton (A), Chelsea (H), Manchester City (A), Hull (H) and Spurs (A), which suggests Chamberlin and co were very much onto something.

The club are set to hold their press conference ahead of the Emirates clash today. It feels increasingly like Pearson’s enforced and permanent absence would benefit Leicester’s attempts to stay up at 13/8 with Ladbrokes.

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