Nigel Pearson was speaking before Hull City’s rather chaotic dismissal of Shota Arveladze but events on Friday only further reinforced the Bristol City’s manager’s view about the precarious nature of his chosen profession, which is showing little sign of changing for the better.
Arvelade was dismissed just eight hours before the Tigers' Championship clash with Luton Town and is the fifth such decision made by an owner in the division since the start of a campaign which is only 10 games old, following Cardiff City, Huddersfield Town, Stoke City and Watford.
Pearson is now the fifth-longest serving boss in the second tier, and although he now feels like a Bristol City manager, having increasingly stamped his authority and identity on the team and club, he’s still very much in the early stages of what he wants to do with this team.
As he's noted before, when commenting about referees, on the hazardous existence of managers, with decisions negatively impacting results that have too much of a bearing on the whims of owners.
“It’s not a very good stat, is it?” Pearson said, with regards to his relative longevity in the hotseat having been in charge now for one year and 218 days. “What it does, it illustrates the types of pressures the decision-makers feel as well.
"Some managers lose their jobs and you can understand why; a lot of managers lose their jobs and you just think, the clubs don’t know what they’re doing.”
Saturday’s game against QPR also highlights the growing trend in the Championship of appointing a younger head coach-type figure, and how the Robins are running contrary to that.
He delivered a smile when it was put to him that he’s the second oldest manager in the division, two years Steve Bruce’s junior, a fact highlighted by the arrival of 42-year-old Michael Beale to BS3 this weekend who’s in his first full-time managerial job.
Having retired from playing at 21, Beale has worked his way up through youth football at Liverpool, into senior coaching with Rangers and Aston Villa and now management with the Rs, and Pearson admits he knows little of him or has crossed paths, something that'll, of course, change at around 2:55pm when the players enter the field before kick-off.
Beale very much personifies the “new way” of thinking, a process City were very much part of when Dean Holden followed Lee Johnson, but since they have reverted back to the more old-fashioned manager figurehead of Pearson; an all-encompassing organisational role which, as he admits, involves delegation to his coaching staff.
It wasn’t so long ago, when Pearson was appointed just last year, that Neil Warnock was declaring a return to the past with his position at Middlesbrough and Mick McCarthy also in place at Cardiff City, but the City boss is the last man standing of that trio.
As for whether the new trend has influenced his way of working, the City manager is somewhat unfairly labelled “old school” and stubborn - stuck in his ways, if you were being particularly harsh - but as his time with the Robins has indicated, the 59-year-old is very much adaptable, shifting systems and approach depending on the players available to him and while retaining core principles of management, not being held back by them.
The “manager” role is also an interesting one because, in his own words, he completely subscribes to that particular position, happy to allow Curtis Fleming, Jason Euell, Pat Mountain and Paddy Orme to conduct the day-to-day while he takes on an overseeing role. Unlike, say, Beale who would be more hands-on when at the training ground.
“I think it’s good that we continue as a nation to develop young coaches, it’s brilliant,” Pearson added. “I would expect every generation to have role models who they aspire to be like. So I don’t judge how people want to go about their own job and how they want to do it. It’s really healthy for the game.
“I also don’t have any problem with being in my autumn years, in fact it’s probably early winter. Age is not something that comes into it. How I develop myself over a sustained period of time, people can say what they want, or an idea of what they think I am, but they don’t really know and I prefer it like that.
“I don’t see any necessity to spend a lot of time seeing how other people work. I prefer to work with people who are ambitious themselves and we have some talented coaches in the football club here, so a part of my job is really to I suppose help them along the way.
“I do prefer to delegate responsibility to people who are good enough to do the job. How I manage might be different to other people or how the new breed of managers, or coaches - they probably see themselves more as coaches than managers. I don’t, I am a manager, I can coach but I don’t see myself as one.
“There are lots of different things to consider but the age side of it? It’s not something that I think too much about. I know I’m getting greyer.”
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