December 19 – Psycho Takes Charge

AFTER Stuart Pearce was named caretaker-manager of Nottingham Forrest today in 1996 he sat down and drew up his starting XI for their next game. Pleased with it, he apparently showed it to his wife, who immediately asked him why he hadn’t bothered with a goalkeeper. Who says coaching badges are a waste of time?

Psycho had been at the City Ground since 1985, when Brian Clough took a punt on a player that had been playing non-league football two years earlier. Still unsure of his future in the game Pearce advertised his services as an electrician in the Forest programme, but he didn’t have to moonlight for too much longer.

Over the next ten years he became club captain and cemented his place as one of the all-time great Forest players, so when Frank Clark stepped down after three and a half years in charge the board looked at Pearce to fill the void.

Give or take the odd early selection problem, Pearce did an admirable job to start with. After guiding Forest out of the relegation zone he was awarded the January 1997 manager of the month award and had the honour of becoming the first club manager to play for his country when Glenn Hoddle persuaded him to come out of international retirement and enlist in England’s World Cup 98 qualifiers.

Forest meanwhile, were taken over by the Bridgford Consortium in February 1997 and Dave Bassett was brought in to help the rookie manager. This only succeeded in blurring the lines of power and Pearce would leave at the end of the season, after claiming the player’s did not know who was in charge.

Later, Pearce would admit that he had been too naïve in his first managerial job, as he went about getting his coaching badges before being given the top job at Manchester City in 2005, having retired as a Citizen three years earlier.

A rather mundane two season for the City faithful followed and Pearce can now be found learning his trade as an assistant to Fabio Capello and as the England u-21 boss.

We’ll leave you with everyone’s favourite Psycho moment below and you can see what we were writing about last year here. If, like us, you haven’t even considered doing any Christmas shopping yet, then grab yourself the OTFD book, available here.