Читать книгу King Power: Leicester City’s Remarkable Season - Richard III, King of England Richard III - Страница 9

When battle ends, to staunch the blood and pain

They crawl away, those with survival blest,

To give their thanks for earned but too brief rest,

For soon enough to war they march again.

Isn’t that ever the way of it, with football’s close season as with martial conflict? The fight rages, some drop, others stand, one standard is captured, another raised. And then the survivors repose to gather strength and savour rest, its flavour sharpened by the knowing how imminent doth the next battle await.

That’s how it was in my day, and a relentlessly bloody day it was.

Now, I would not your history tutor be, and here swear oath that lecture you I’ll not. For ’tis to read of Leicester City’s tale – and yes, perchance, my modest part in that – that you have turned unto this tome; not of days of yore, when Roses went to war. All that and more is on the world wide web, and in the history book upon the shelf, which ABBA knew fore’er repeats itself. They also knew the winner takes it all, which is the sooth in football as in war.

And speaking of that acronymic band from Sweden’s fair and fjord-laden land, ’tis of a dancing queen that we shall speak – or rather three at work in Old Siam, only seventeen yet women of the street, who pranced for coin with Foxes also three. The upshot of all that was dire indeed, for one of them was Nigel Pearson’s lad, a player at the club, whose arch misdeeds would toll the bell of doom for his poor dad.

You may have read of this in popular prints, for ’twas an odious scandal of the sort that drives the tabloids mad with lust for blood, and shapes the course of history for a club.

Before the Foxes’ close season trip of June ’15, when to the Thai capital they went on ‘goodwill tour’ (hahaha), a word or two to set the record straight about the humble author of this slender book.

And if I break the solemn vow above, to give historic tales the widest berth, indulge me but a while and have a heart, for infamy has too long cloaked my name.

I mean, try to imagine the torment of spending five centuries before finally I was found, decomposing beneath the Fords and Volvos of a council car compound. And while I lay at rest, though scarce at peace, I slandered was as the evillest of kings. A cripple and a withered little runt, a murderer, a Machiavellian …

But no, rhyme howsoever well they may, some words are better left unwrit. Suffice it that all bar none consider me a shit.

Yet I, like all, was who I was, as made by God and forged by times, not by any means a saint, nor yet a sinner whole. And what I was above all else, ere I was king and after I was crowned, for all the hunchback tag of Shakespeare’s pen, was soldier waging fierce and brutal war.

At brother Edward’s side – and brother Clarence too, though later we fell out, as brothers do – I strove for York’s righteous claim to crown. We took each battle as it came, and some we lost, though rather more we won.

My first big battle came soon after return from exile in France, when I was but eighteen and at Tewkesbury held the flank in Edward’s name, and so did help to place him ’pon the throne. I was a bold and active general in the field. Not fleet of foot like Jamie V, of course, yet not lightly to be dismissed upon a horse (a horse, my kingdom for … Never said it, by the way. That preening Stratford ponce sticking words in my mouth again).

My purpose here is not to glorify myself, for narcissism is not the prince’s way (it is, in fact, but grant me some poetic licence if you will). ’Tis to impress on you that war is much the same, in spirit if not toll of blood and limb, whether fought with vicious sword or round white ball.

In football, as in wartime long ago, the days of peace between the battles are short. And in those times of rest that pass so quick, when the sea looks most tranquil and becalmed, know well how soon ’twill surge to make you sick.

Even thus it was at Leicester City after the miracle pursuant upon my cathedral interment. When concluded the 2014–15 season, the skies looked blue and bright for Nigel Pearson, regaled as our messiah in glorious May.

You might have thought those skies set fair for him, that years of grace for him did lie in wait. How foolish you’d have been if thought you that. How soon the broody, portentous clouds re-formed.

Now, Nige is not an easy man to love, to those who know him only from afar. Close-up, he’s a diamond geezer – couldn’t wish for a nicer guy – but few other than his boys get close.

Intemperate when irked he often is, while irked he all too easily seems to be. You recall that February day as relegation loomed, when he placed his mitts around a Palace player’s throat? Other eruptions from him there came besides, as happens when the pressure sorely mounts. Let this alone give flavour of his wrath.

After that 1–3 loss to Chelsea’s champions elect – the lone defeat in nine post-burial games (just sayin’) – off he went on one in conclave with press hacks. It’s there on YouTube if you have time to spare. If not, swift told, he had a fearful rant, fixing a scribe with blazing eye, humiliating the wretch before his peers, taunting him for ‘ostrich’ with head in sand.

Such forthright tongue ill served him with the board, with whom relations had quite awhile been strained. If Nige was already on borrowed time, the fatal loan was truly pound of flesh, for ’twas supplied by his own flesh and blood – ’twas James his son who unwitting wielded the axe.

Yet, hard as ’tis to raise a boy child to manhood, managing a football club is harder.

For to be head coach is to be king, and yet not king. You rule the dressing room, aye, yet another, higher tyrant commands you. Even as the Kings of England once, before bawdy Henry VIII broke the chains, did shiver in the shadow of the Pope.

For ’tis chairman of the club who stands supreme, whose thumb doth rise and fall to seal your fate. And Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha’s did for Pearson’s doom descend, after the ill-fated club tour to his homeland in the east.

We will linger not upon this tale, for an acrid taste it leaves upon the tongue. ’Tis written in the Mirror and the Sun (though not the stars, for stellar it was not), so waits online for those who would know more.

One night in June in Vichai’s Thai hotel (also King Power by name, and in Bangkok), Pearson’s son and others did themselves debase. A trinity of hookers in their teens were ushered to chamber of the bed there to disrobe, then sinuously they did dance for lascivious eyes, and engage in sexing sport betwixt themselves, while James and his two friends did leering watch.

’Twould alone have been enough to cause a stink, for encaptur’d all this was on camera phone. Yet compounded was their sin by manyfold, for they did verbally abuse those dancing girls, with words about the slanting of their eyes, as Edinburgh’s Duke did speak in China once, though without the Duke’s misplaced attempt at wit.

For Vichai and Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha, not merely chairman’s son but his vice chair too, such vice could not imaginably be borne. For they those recent years had worked to increase the traffic of vacationers to their native land, and so the local purse enrich with ‘goodwill tours’, though no prey did this goodwill hunting run to ground.

’Twas on the 17th day of June that Srivaddhanaprabha patience did expire, and the boy Pearson and the other pair – players at the club, like James, till then – were from Leicester City’s books expunged.

How often in myth and history do we find a son raining grief upon his father’s name? With the crapulous word-whore Shakespeare ’twas quite a theme, and also with Dr Freud who looked at minds, though mothers and sons seemed more to Sigmund’s taste, like Oedipus who Laius at crossroads slew, and in ignorance gave his mum Jocasta a seeing-to.

My own father in truth I barely knew, for he died when I was eight. Probably as well. I’m not saying I’d have done him, as tiny Caligula dispatched noble Germanicus to the underworld. But to be fair – or put another way, in all fairness – you can’t rule it out.

And what of Edward, eighth of his name to sit upon England’s throne, Nazi manqué, traitor king, who broke George V’s heart by frolicking with Maryland’s strumpet of whom ’twas said she learned such nether-region tricks in those same bawdy houses of Orient whence our Thai dancing girls did come?

And did you ever see Thor, a favourite movie of mine I must confess (loved that flying hammer! Could’ve done with that at Bosworth), wherein the thunder god did Odin sore distress by warring with the Frost Giants in defiance of the Asgardian sovereign’s will.

Boys shalt be boys, or so we used to say, and thus it was in covert days of yore. But in the age of videocamera phone, which captureth the image as it moves, boys at their grave peril be boys, and oft times at the peril of their dads.

Once James Pearson was from the King Power flung, the writing for his sire was ’pon the wall, though perhaps it had been there already a little while, in pencil scrawled if not by inky quill. For Nigel would not lightly kiss the ring, so thus displeased the owners from Siam, or so at least it feels safe to assume.

While the cliché holds it be the case, that for yes-men the powerful hold contempt, the truth could not be more to the obverse. ’Tis sycophants we rulers value most, and those who dare say nay to us we hate. A little life lesson there for you office folk. Make thy tongues as brown as the pelt of a deer roaming the forest in autumn if thou wouldst get on.

With James’s dismissal the final straw did come, and on 30 June a club statement issued forth. I quoth the proclamation here verbatim, a touch précis’d only for concision:

Regrettably, the club believes that the working relationship between Nigel and the board is no longer viable. It has become clear that fundamental differences in perspective exist between us … We trust that the supporters will recognise that the owners have always acted with the best interests of the club at heart and with the long-term future as their greatest priority.

This trust of which they spoke was pure phantasm, the fans recognising no such noble intent. To them, ’twas folly to dispense with he who so lately the bonds of hope from doom had forged, and brought on players – our most beloved Vardy, the subtle Mahrez, brave Morgan at the back, those stout English yeomen Albrighton and Drinkwater, whom I would have had at my side at Tewkesbury, and more; to each and every one we’ll shortly come – who would ere long be the darlings of the league.

But hark, who comest now with heart in which wrath and rage be aflicker?

Why, it’s our onetime Foxes golden boy, the crisp salesman Gary Lineker.

The mellow Lineker had ne’er been so cross since Graham Taylor took him off in that game when he was but one shy of Bobby Charlton’s scoring record of forty-nine England goals. Yet at eventide of 30 June, when Pearson’s demise had barely yet sunk in, he did tweet forth like an outraged sparrow – and not once, but in quick succession twice.

Gary Lineker

@GaryLineker

Leicester City have sacked Nigel Pearson! Really? WTF! Could you kindly reinstate him like the last time you fired him?

7:41 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.