“People love to hate Neil Warnock,” Neil Warnock claimed in 2004, forgetting that the British public are not overly fond either whenever someone refers to themselves in the third person.
Two years prior to that, the touchline-prowling, Molotov cocktail in a bad sports coat went much further, claiming, “You would think I was guilty of committing more crimes than Osama Bin Liden.”
If such statements smack of a persecution complex, in this particular instance the former manager of almost every unglamourous club known to man, only reveals that he has commendable self-awareness.
Because back then, people did hate him. Or more accurately, as he says, loved to hate him.
It was enjoyable seeing him pained in defeat, ideally after encountering an unfair refereeing decision or cruel misfortune.
It was entertaining to see him erupt, this petty, argumentative, temperamental, and wholly unreasonable figure, who increasingly down the years has come to resemble a Disney witch.
He made for a great pantomime villain.
Except things change. They always do. And as so often happens, when someone sticks around for long enough, at some juncture they experience a revisiting in how they are perceived.
Warnock has absolutely stuck around long enough, beginning his lengthy tenure in the dug-out at Gainsborough Trinity in 1980 and remarkably he’s still around today, at Huddersfield, aged 74.
He has presided over 1600 games and counting, and no-one else in English football comes close to matching that.
Across those four decades, the usually box-office and always outspoken boss faithfully wound up opposition supporters and accrued a list of lifelong enemies within the game that runs to several pages, and because of all this it’s hard to identity exactly when we started to warm to his wily ways.
Perhaps its origins lie all the way back in 2007, when Warnock took charge of a Crystal Palace side in peril and transformed their circumstances by turning to the club’s youth set-up.
No proof was needed of his managerial abilities but here it was all the same, an outstanding feat requiring rare motivational skills and coaching nuance.
Or maybe it has been a drip-feed effect, from his many media appearances – ranging from punditry to podcasts – that showed the other sides to a previously one-dimensional moaner.
He is, first and foremost, a family man who loves nothing more than to retreat to Cornwall with his kith and kin. And he is funny too. Self-deprecating and funny.
Or perhaps, in a modern-day milieu dominated by cold, clinical footballing scientists his larger-than-life personality has come to be appreciated. He is a throw-back in the best possible sense. A character in the truest sense.
Whatever the reason, and whenever the reputational rebuild of the man took place, it left us fearful for Warnock when he agreed to take on the Huddersfield gig late last season.
The Terriers looked doomed to drop, rock-bottom and written off in the Championship betting and beyond all hope. Only of course Neil Warnock revived and revitalised them, not just the team, but the club and town.
Our EFL Championship tips will likely predict a mid-table spot or better in 2022/24 when hostilities resume in August and what a turn-around that will be in such a short period of time.
That’s assuming however that Warnock is still at the helm.
With only a couple of months remaining on his existing contract, the irascible pensioner has claimed that he’s erring towards the quiet life now, a retirement that would be richly deserved. Cornwall beckons.
If that transpires, we’ll miss him, for sure. We’ll be immensely sorry to see him go.
And whoever thought we’d be saying that about one of the great pantomime villains of our time?
*Credit for all of the photos in this article belongs to AP Photo*
