Steven
Active Member
From the Grauniad. :icon_wink Interesting that FoxesTalk get an oblique mention - see the highlighted section. :icon_eek: :icon_bigg
Statistically, I'm the worst Leicester City manager in history, and that doesn't sit well'
Ian Holloway needs a win at Stoke tomorrow or he could be looking for a new job
This article appeared in the Guardian on Saturday May 03 2008 on p4 of the Sport news & features section. It was last updated at 01:58 on May 03 2008.
By his own admission, Ian Holloway is tense. His team are one bad result away from being relegated to the third tier of English football for the first time and, if the worst happens to Leicester City, it threatens to have serious repercussions for one of the most passionate and entertaining managers in the business.
This is an era of impatient chairmen and intolerant supporters and, in the law of the football jungle, Holloway could be forgiven for wondering how many out-of-work managers have already made discreet inquiries behind his back. His chairman, Milan Mandaric, is currently on his fifth manager in 16 months, a trigger-happy run that makes Doug Ellis, of years gone by at Aston Villa, look like an old softie.
Many fans have sympathised, but others have made it clear that they want him out and when he clicked on a supporters' website this week he found a picture of himself mocked up as a clown. "My wife found it actually," he says. "She likes to have a look through these sites to see what the fans are saying. I suppose it was meant to be amusing. But I didn't find it funny. It's not a time for jokes."
To describe it as a difficult week does not do it justice. Last Saturday, his team lost 3-1 at home to Sheffield Wednesday to leave themselves 21st in the Championship, facing a final game tomorrow against a Stoke City side gunning for automatic promotion. After the defeat, Holloway and his players had to grit their teeth and sit through a dinner with sponsors and supporters. "We were supposed to be having a nice time," he says. "The truth is we looked as though we were all going to hang ourselves - and some of the people who write on the websites probably wish we had."
On Monday it was the player of the season dinner and, again, Holloway sat at the top table with a face like thunder. On his way there he had tuned in to BBC Radio Leicester's phone-in and heard himself being blamed for everything, it seemed, apart from the half-time oranges being too sour. One particularly embittered caller asked why so many of the players who had capitulated against Wednesday were drunk in a Loughborough nightclub on Saturday night.
"I didn't like what I heard," says Holloway. "Since I've been here these poor Leicester fans have had to put up with all sorts. Right now, it just seems that the fear factor and negativity has taken over. There aren't many people who give us a chance in hell. Some of our fans have already got us losing. I switched on the radio thinking, 'They can say what they like, it isn't going to affect me.' But it hurts."
The sums are simple: Leicester are a place above third-bottom Southampton on goal difference and a win at Stoke virtually guarantees safety. Anything else, however, leaves them vulnerable and Southampton have the easier game, at home to Sheffield United. "The only way we can look at it is that we have to win," says Holloway. "We've got to go there and tweak the nose of fear and stick an ice cube down the vest of terror. That's not an Ian Holloway quote, by the way. It's Blackadder."
He hasn't lost his sense of humour then, although it must be difficult at times. Holloway is a believer in positive thinking but is also realistic enough to appreciate that managers who get relegated usually find their P45 is not far behind. "If Sven-Goran Eriksson can get the sack after the results he has had, then who am I? If Jose Mourinho can be sacked and Avram Grant is in a European Cup final and might be sacked, then who am I?" He had answered the question himself a few moments earlier. "Statistically, I'm currently the worst Leicester City manager in history and that doesn't sit well with me." Not that he is giving up. "On my gravestone it will say, 'Here lies Ollie - he tried.' I will never give up."
As well as Leicester and Southampton, another three clubs - Coventry City, Sheffield Wednesday and Blackpool - could all go down tomorrow. It promises to be a nerve-shredding climax to a peculiar Championship season and Holloway has already brought his players together for "a speech that could have roused the dead".
He also showed them some more internet images. "There was one website asking supporters to send in pictures that summed up Leicester's season. There were pictures of boats going down and a photograph of the Freight Rover thing, or Johnstone's Paints, whatever it's called. You can protect people sometimes but on other occasions you can use these things. Maybe that's what the players needed - that kind of stinging criticism."
He describes himself as "devastated" that things have worked out so badly since he took the job in December. His was an acrimonious split from Plymouth, leaving a lot of bad feeling, as his wife, Kim, found out when she was shopping one afternoon in Morrisons. "She was pushing her trolley along and someone came up behind her and said, 'What's it like being married to a ****ing liar?'" says Holloway. "I never lied once; in fact, I don't think I've told a lie in my life."
His eyes smoulder with anger. When Holloway was struggling at Wimbledon and Brentford in the mid 1980s, Kim developed non-Hodgkin lymphoma and had to have chemotherapy. To their delight, Kim recovered so well that she gave birth to a son, William. Identical twins, Chloe and Eve, followed and are profoundly deaf, as is a third daughter, Harriet.
"It gives you a sense of perspective," he says. "This game against Stoke is the biggest of my life. It is vital, it is critical, but when you've seen a member of your family dying it does put things into perspective. I've got three deaf kids. I don't want to belittle anyone, and I know why the supporters take it so personally when we're losing. But life's about perspective."
A word that is often used to describe Holloway is madcap but, as he frequently points out, he is neither mad nor wearing a cap. "Maybe people would see me in a different light if they asked me how I coped with having a wife who has cancer, how I cope with the deafness, how I helped one of my daughters yesterday when she was having a panic attack because she had a headache and was being pushed hard at school."
The conversation turns to Frank Lampard's performance for Chelsea against Liverpool on Wednesday. "It's about courage," says Holloway, nodding appreciatively. "I've been in a similar position. I saw my dad take his last breath at 8.30 in the morning and that night I played [for Bristol Rovers] against VS Rugby."
Holloway being the unique character he is, then goes off on a typically amusing speech about a scene from Apollo 13 and, even after listening to the tape a dozen times, it is still difficult to know exactly what he means. He is clear, however, about the task that lies ahead. "I know we haven't got two decent games in us," he says. "Sadly, we have proved that [Leicester have not won successive games all season]. But I think we've got one."
