Neil Warnock gave an interview to the BBC this week in which he blamed pretty much everyone apart from himself for getting him the sack from QPR earlier in the month.
This is nothing new for Warnock. Whilst most managers are not averse to throwing a bit of stick at a referee when they lose a game, barely a match goes by without Warnock singling out an official as culpable for his team's poor performance.
Blaming twitter, the chairman, Joey Barton, modern wages, Mark Hughes' agent and everything else under the sun for his lack of a job is merely one step up from blaming a referee for a loss. Warnock is doing what he as always done: shifting the blame from himself to often poorly defined external forces, all apparently intent on making his teams lose.
His record speaks for itself. Where other managers - notably Arsene Wenger - play the blame game and then fall back on trophies and impressive winning records, Warnock cannot.
In 21 games under his stewardship this season, QPR won just four of them. The twelve losses included a 4-0 opening day defeat at the hands of now-nineteenth place Bolton, a 6-0 drubbing by Martin Jol's inconsistent Fulham and two 2-1 losses to Norwich, one of the teams QPR were promoted with, at home and away respectively. His win percentage in charge of QPR in the Premier League was a dismal 19%.
Warnock's other stint in the Premier League was as manager of Sheffield United, whom he got relegated in the 2006/2007 season, blaming Liverpool's much-changed team who lost 1-0 to Fulham during their preparation for that seasons Champions League final. Whilst that result may have been the one that broke the camel's back - the camel presumably taking full blame for the relegation - it does not tell the story of a season.
Sheffield United won ten games, drew eight, lost twenty and finished eighteenth, on the same number of losses as fellow relegated sides Charlton and the dismal, twenty-eight total point-scoring, Watford of that year. His win percentage in 2006/2007 was 26%, i.e; in a season where he got a club relegated he was winning more games than his 2011/2012 QPR side were when he was sacked.
Add Warnock's Premier League stints together and his winning average comes out at just short of 24%. In other words: it will take Warnock a touch more than four games in any given Premier League season before his side registers a win. This is not the record of someone who, over the course of fifty-nine Premier League games, has lost the odd point to a bad refereeing performance. The only way to explain it as such is in the case that Warnock was playing the referee up front and the official kept on missing open nets. This, demonstrably, has not been the case.
The reasons for Warnock's good performance in lower leagues (he got Sheffield and QPR promoted to the top flight) is too easy to write off as happening just because the quality of football is worse. Clearly, Warnock has got the best out of some decent teams and has done so whilst professing ignorance of 'tactics'. Again, singling this out as the root cause is too easy - tactics are necessary just as much in the lower leagues as they are in the top flight.
That said, when you are consistently successful in one league and consistently abject in another, that tells a separate, very internal, story in its own right. Warnock needs to come to terms with the fact that for all the referees, camels, Joey Bartons and other malignant persecutors of his clubs, he just does not seem, currently, to have what it takes to be a Premier League manager. The admittance of this fact could do him wonders.
With thanks to @Afrofilmviewer for The Guardian link.
