Football hardman played for seven different clubs, becoming a club legend with Forest, and also ensuring his name will go down in English penalty shootout folklore
DUBBED ‘Psycho’ for the kind of enthusiastic tackling that saw his reputation precede him, Stuart Pearce remains one of the most loved defenders in the modern era.
Having started his career with non-league Wealdstone (while still working as an electrician), Pearce moved to Coventry City before moving on to Nottingham Forest where he became a club legend, winning two League Cups, two Full Members’ Cups and the club’s Player of the Year award on three occasions.
He also won 78 caps for England, scoring five goals and the picture of him converting his penalty in the Euro ’96 shootout against Spain, six years after his crucial miss in the World Cup semi-final, remains one of the most iconic images in English football….
When Nottingham Forest played away at Brighton in the 1986/87 Littlewoods Cup, one of the linesman happened to be his brother Ray – and nobody noticed.
“No one knew, apart from the Forest team,” he recalled in his autobiography. “It was funny running up the wing and having my brother alongside me on the touchline. He could have booked me because I kept taking the mickey out of him – ‘Oi, you ginger d***head,’ is one thing I remember calling him.”
In an era when most of his contemporaries were listening to Luther Vandross, Pearce’s penchant for punk certainly made him stand out.
Not only does he feature on the sleeve of God’s Lonely Men by The Lurkers but he also once smashed up The Strangler’s dressing room, albeit with the band’s permission.
He even got to introduce The Sex Pistols live on stage at London’s Finsbury Park in 1996, accompanied by that other famous punk rocker, current England boss Gareth Southgate.
When Ruud Gullit took over as manager of Newcastle in 1998 he found the relationships with more senior players in the side, like Pearce, Alan Shearer, Rob Lee and John Barnes, a little rocky and often sidelined them in favour of younger players.
For the players, it was a clear signal that the Dutchman felt threatened by them and their influence at the club.
Mind you, Pearce didn’t really help matters.
During one training session he smashed into his manager, sending him hurtling to the turf.
Cue laughter all round.
During his early time at Nottingham Forest, under then manager Brian Clough, Pearce was so unsure of his future that he continued to advertise his services as an electrician in the club’s matchday programme.
In 1998, Pearce’s car was crushed by a lorry that overturned, right on top of his vehicle.
With him in it.
Needless to say the lorry came off worse while Pearce, ever the hardman, walked away a slight injury to his hand a bit of a stiff back.
Pearce has only ever manager two teams at club level – Nottingham Forest and Manchester City.
And he’s never won anything.
Indeed, in 2016 he was named as the most ‘average’ Premier League manager in a study of all of the 209 Premier League managers in the competition’s history.
The study by Voucherbox revealed that the average Premier League boss had two jobs over 1,165 days and boasted a win ration of just 30%.
With two clubs and 32 wins and 26 draws from his top-flight coaching career, Pearce had a win ratio of 30.77%, making him, officially, the most average Premier League boss ever.
While he may not have scaled the heights of club management, Pearce has made his mark on the international scene.
Thankfully, it’s not in the way he used to make marks on his opponents’ shins.
In 2000, he was the assistant to England’s caretaker manager Peter Taylor and he also the national side’s caretaker coach for one game when Fabio Capello was sacked in 2012.
Perhaps the highlights of his managerial career, however, came in 2009 when he steered the England Under-21 to the final of the European Championships where they were beaten by Germany.
His role as manager of the GB Olympic football team in the London 2012 games runs it a close second though.
We’ll just leave this with you, uttered by Pearce as results started to turn around for Nottingham Forest.
“I can see a carrot at the end of the tunnel…”
Genius.
At the age of 53, Pearce signed for non-league side Longford some 13 years after retiring from playing.
The Gloucestershire club had lost all of their matches in the 2015/16 season, conceding 179 goals to boot and needed help, desperately.
And it nearly worked.
Psycho came off the bench and ‘the worst team in Britain’ so nearly pinched a draw in a narrow 1-0 defeat. “This club has team spirit and camaraderie in abundance,” he said. “Week in, week out, they play with smiles on their faces, for the love of the game. If they were just in it for silverware,” he added, “they would have given up a long time ago.”
