Nigel Pearson was excellent at building the club from nothing. He made great appointments and enabled the people he worked with to do great things. As a football manager, he was bang average at best and he's now done for. Finished completely by being too principled for his own good and paying the ultimate professional price. He had to sit, stewing with resentment, and watch everything he was building achieve more than he could have possibly dream of. And more than he was ever capable of achieving. It's a career killer and it has killed his career. He'll never be an effective manager again and his two subsequent appointments have proved this conclusively.
Forget him.
Appleton would be a decent shout I suppose. He knows the players and is available. I expect that his distaste for the club would end with Puel leaving. It was obvious that they fell out towards the end of last season and that was why he was crudely and rudely discarded. I thought his caretaker spell last season was very effective.
However, that just feels like a waste of time. Seriously, what's the point to it? We have 15 games left and only need one or at most two wins to be secure. If I were Rudkin or Whelan or Top, I'd stay with things as they are until the end of the season now. However, I would have people working day and night on recruiting the right man in the summer.
