The managerial merry-go round claimed its first casualty of the season yesterday before clubs have had the chance to return for pre-season training. Nigel Pearson was finally and, definitively, sacked by Leicester despite the fact that he led a remarkable turn around to ensure Premier League survival.
Despite his team delivering on the pitch, bizarrely aggressive press conferences, throttling opposition players and seeing his son sacked after a racist orgy appear to have been too much for the Leicester owners to look past. Pearson is out of a job and Leicester have a new manager to find.
But could that new manager be an old manager? As soon as the first reports of Pearson's departure emerged, thoughts turned to his replacement and a man high on the list of supposed possibilities is Martin O'Neill.
Numerous media outlets in England are reporting that O'Neill, along with Sean Dyche, Sam Allardyce, Neil Lennon and David Moyes are the most likely contenders to take up the job at the King Power Stadium. On the back of that, bookies currently have the Ireland manager at around 8/1 to return to the club that he left back in 2000.
In reality, there appears to be little concrete in the links between O'Neill and the Leicester job. However, as many have pointed out, he doesn't exactly appear to be overly content in his current guise as Ireland manager so if Leicester were to come calling, it would be very difficult for O'Neill to turn it down.
