And there goes another one
14th May, 2007
3.19pm. Manchester City’s official website releases a statement confirming that Stuart Pearce has left the club. No one who was at Friday’s press conference ahead of the match at Tottenham will be remotely surprised.
The atmosphere at Carrington ahead of the Spurs game had a curious end-of-term feel about it. Hardly anyone there, and a sense among some of us that we were just going through the motions before the summer break. (I did stop sort of bringing in games, though. I’m not sure how well Kerplunk, Guess Who or Mousetrap would have gone down.)
Such an atmosphere was probably due in part to the gridlock on the M60 preventing several journalists from getting there on time (or at all, in the case of whoever was meant to be there for Sky Sports News). But even then, it still felt like the end of something – and not just the end of the season.
Pearce politely but firmly answered the questions about his future, in the same way he has every week for the two months that have elapsed since City’s FA Cup exit at Blackburn saw the rumours of a hurricane begin to gather speed.
“It would be fair to say that I’ve not had a great deal to spend over the two years I’ve been in charge,” Pearce said on Friday. “That’s the board’s decision. They’ve never suggested at any time that I’m not the man to take the club forward.”
Pearce has been talking about a lack of cash for several weeks now. When a manager says he hasn’t got much to spend, the chances are he isn’t banking on a long-term working relationship with his chairman. Pearce may not have been told until today that he was going, but he would have been daft not to suspect that there was a chance he would be on his way come the summer.
Now another club is looking for a new manager. For City, there is the additional plot provided by a possible takeover, likely to be by former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s consortium. As I write this, at 6.03pm, Claudio Ranieri is the favourite to become City’s next boss.
One era ends, another begins. When and with who remains to be decided. But there will be a few more people at the next Manchester City press conference; that much I’m willing to bet.
