Sky Sports' Johnny Phillips: Premier League's better with a panto villain in it
Cardiff City manager Neil Warnock has grabbed a few column inches again, giving some entertaining quotes during his radio cameo in midweek.
His engaging stint as Alan Brazil’s breakfast co-host on TalkSport was worth a listen and left the impression that the Premier League will be much better off for having him back next season.
Warnock is one the game’s great survivors. A magician of his trade who conjures up the most unlikely successes. A whirlwind of controversy and bluster. A pantomime villain extraordinaire.
In this globalised Premier League, with owners falling over themselves to identify the next continental plat du jour, here is the old Yorkshire pie and peas man about to go toe-to-toe with them all in the dugout. It will be fascinating viewing.
Warnock revealed this week that one of his very first managerial adversaries had been in touch with an apt quote.
Russ Perkins was manager of the now defunct South Liverpool when Warnock was starting out in management at Gainsborough Trinity 38 years ago. Perkins had stumbled across a line from American poet Samuel Ullman’s composition Youth that summed up Warnock.
“Youth is not a time of life, it’s a state of mind.”
Warnock has been threatening to retire for years, but can’t give up the game that keeps him young. There is always a glint in the eye for one more challenge. His promotion with Cardiff will go down as one of the greatest of all his achievements.
That Villa and Fulham, with significantly stronger squads, are meeting today to fight for a Premier League place Warnock has secured says plenty. There are others left behind in The Championship who can only envy what Warnock managed on such a shoestring.
In an era of player-power, the man now in his 70th year still holds the cards when it comes to man-management. There are not many in the game prepared to publicly put a rocket up their players, but Warnock will do just that. “Managers still have to get the whip out and have a go at them some times, especially the defenders,” he said. “My lads know I’m going to have a go at them at half-time if they do something that I’ve been on (at them not to do) for days and weeks. It just reminds them not to do it.”
If he comes across as the last of the games great ranters and ravers, Warnock is always prepared to change his methods when the circumstances require. When guiding Queens Park Rangers to the Premier League in 2011, for the first time in 15 years, he built his Championship-winning side around Adel Taarabt, a player who was almost impossible to manage.
Despite the talented playmaker regularly missing training, Warnock coaxed match-winning performances out of him while getting his senior professionals at the club onside. His decision to ban Taarabt’s team-mates from passing to him in their own half was inspired.
It was only when Joey Barton arrived ahead of the Premier League season, and ignored Warnock’s plea to leave the player to his own devices, that the Moroccan lost his way. Barton was accused of bullying the player and the pair fell out spectacularly.
Warnock has had many a run-in of his own too. The infamous battle of Bramall Lane in 2002 remains a stain. His Sheffield United side was reduced to six players – three sent-off before two more left the field claiming injury – which led to the abandonment of the game with opponents Albion leading 3-0.
More recently his former player Jason Puncheon was fined by the Football Association for tweeting a raft of accusations about Warnock’s “crooked” behaviour – tweets which were later deleted but were raised at a parliamentary select committee hearing. Warnock refuted all the allegations.
Warnock has never shirked a challenge, be it from those in the opposing dugout, his own players or the media. On every occasion there is controversy he steps up and faces the questions. There are no topics off the agenda or incidents he didn’t see.
The most recent of those occasions occurred after Wolves’ dramatic win at Cardiff towards the end of the season. As Nuno Espirito Santo charged across the pitch to celebrate his side’s win after two injury-time penalties were squandered by Cardiff, television cameras picked up Warnock’s foul-mouthed tirade towards the Wolves boss.
After the match Warnock didn’t hold back, labelling him a “total disgrace” and refused to accept Nuno’s apology for failing to shake hands at full-time. But only those who judge Warnock on face value would suggest he meant every word of it. This was Warnock the pantomime villain, taking the moral high ground when he knew it didn’t really exist.
This week Warnock revealed the pair had spoken. “I rang him up last week and said well done to him because he’s done a great job.
“I think he was a bit surprised I called him. They’ve been super this year. He’s a nice man, life’s too short.”
Whether Warnock really thinks that, who knows, the truth may lie somewhere in the middle of the post-match rant and the conciliatory phone call.
Because there will always be the angry, slighted Warnock looking for someone to lash out against just as much as there will be the smiling bonhomie of the Warnock that is so engaging.
But most of all Warnock moves on, lets bygones be bygones, far quicker than his adversaries do. That says as much about his critics as it does the man himself.
