In February it was being reported that Nigel Pearson was sacked at Leicester manager. We reported it too soon as it turned out, but surely he was on thin ice that night. Very thin ice.

That was the day when he seemed to have lost it completely. That was the day when he grabbed Crystal Palace midfielder James McArthur by the throat and then pulled the Scottish international back as he tried to leave. McArthur himself admitted to feeling ‘scared’ of Pearson during the incident. And it’s not hard to see why - it wasn’t the sort of thing you see very often on a football pitch, and Pearson had a creepy, maniacal grin on his face. He had something of a serial killer about him.

The Leicester manager has been prickly all season, always coy with the media in interviews. He keeps his guard up and doesn’t seem to have a lot of fun being interviewed, and even Gary Lineker has characterised Pearson as ‘weird’.

So throughout the season, it has looked like the pressure, the stress and strain of Premier League management was getting to Pearson. He looked like a man who was struggling under the pressure of keeping his team in the Premier League. And only last week, Nigel Pearson caused controversy by calling a journalist at the BBC an ‘ostrich’.

He has confronted both journalists and fans this season. Sworn at them and fought with them, and only occasionally has he apologised.

So he’s had his fair share of controversial moments it’s safe to say. And it looked like the pressure had gotten to him so much that he’d simply lost the plot.

Yet his team are climbing out of the relegation zone, they have won five of their last six games, and going into their final three games they will fear no one. Two of the games, Sunderland and QPR look very winnable indeed, and even their other game against Southampton looks tasty. I’d back Saints this weekend, but you never know. Leicester are on form and only one win would put them on 37 points, which may yet be good enough for safety.

So how can a manager who has totally lost his head be the mastermind of such an escape?

The answer is, maybe he never actually lost it after all.

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The Independent has labelled him a maverick, and that’s an apt description. He is certainly different to most of the managers in the league, and he is perhaps the reason why Leicester are doing so well. It might be because of Pearson rather than in spite of him.

Firstly, they’ve played well all season. They haven’t really had the right results from time to time, but they’ve never been thrashed, they’ve always been in games. And perhaps if they had managed to turn some of those narrow defeats into draws they wouldn’t be in this position just now.

And secondly, it looks like Leicester are a confidence team. All of their wins this season in the league have come in little unbeaten patches. They won two on the spin in August-September, they were unbeaten in three around the turn of the New Year, and just now they’ve gone on a run where they have lost only once in six games - losing only to Chelsea, and there’s no shame in that at all.

Both these things may have a common cause: togetherness. Pearson has created a squad where there are no rumblings of dissent, they players all seem to play together and for the shirt, and clearly Pearson takes any slight against his players personally. That explains his spats with both journalists and fans.

In fact, Pearson seems to have a keen sense of squad togetherness. In 2010, during Pearson’s first spell at Leicester, defender Wayne Brown clashed with teammates after he talked of his political views and his support for the BNP. It wasn’t his political views as such, but his belligerent way of putting them across that angered his teammates. In a squad filled with players of different nationalities and different backgrounds, Pearson saw that this could cause unrest and division - so Brown was swiftly out on his ear.

This season Pearson has been protecting his players like a mother goose. He’s defended them against perceived attacks and he’s gone on the offensive himself against those doing the attacking. Even if he’s gone over the top at times.

Pearson has made himself the centre of attention and taken the media spotlight off the players. At clubs like Newcastle and QPR, the players are under the spotlight at the minute. The consensus is that they aren’t playing well enough, they don’t care, or they simply aren’t good enough. At Aston Villa before Tim Sherwood’s arrival, the media were chanting the same line. But Sherwood has taken the limelight, and so has Pearson. Both for different reasons, but the outcome is the same. The pressure, the spotlight and the media focus is on the managers so the players can go out and win in peace.

And the results have come.

Leicester are still threatened by relegation, but their fixtures are kind. Going on current form and the fixture lists, Leicester should have enough to stay up now. And if they do, they’ll have their manager to thank. He’s been the human shield, taking all of the flak and attention this season to allow his players to win games. The togetherness he has instilled in the squad has seen them through the tough periods too, and their form is all down to Pearson.

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