Colin – The Columbo of Football

Thursday night and the least surprising surprise of the football season emerged.

Neil Warnock has not retired.

Despite Jose Mourinho, David Moyes and Brendan Rogers all being out of work at the moment, Rotherham United decided to appoint Warnock as their manager until the end of the season.

Neil Ashton, esteemed football journalist and Palace fan (though hopefully not in that order) was straight in there playing Warnock bingo:

‘Just helping out’ …. Tick!

‘Great set of lads’ …. Tick!

‘Last job’ …. Tick!

Warnock has become the wandering caretaker manager, apparently happy to take on a short term contract with any club in Yorkshire or London that asks.

He is the managerial version of a footballer who just cannot give it up and is happy to play for anyone who will have him.

Ian Wright’s career statistics should really just cover the Palace and Arsenal years. The odd game and goal here and there at Burnley, Celtic and West ‘Am dilute his record, and pictures of him in a shirt other than the ‘Virgin’ Palace shirt or the ‘JVC’ Arsenal shirt just look wrong.

(Does anyone remember JVC? The Snapchat of their day … probably)

Warnock should be remembered for his lengthy and angry tenure at Notts County and particularly Sheffield United and then his unexpected, impressive first spell as Palace manager.

Oh and for that anagram.

Instead he has become Football’s Columbo.  When you think he is happy to have the odd spot on TalkSport or 5Live as an expert summariser, he returns with the ‘just one more job’ routine.

In these days of eight year contracts for managers, part of Warnock’s popularity would appear to lie in the fact that he is happy to be paid by the hour.

At Rotherham he is just there until the end of the season.  At Queens Park Rangers a few weeks ago, he was just there until someone younger and trendier was hired to ‘do a Dougie’.

[Quick non-Warnock aside here – who thinks Jimmy-Floyd Hasselbaink will do any better at QPR than Dougie did at Bolton Wanderers? The money is running out, he will not be able to make big signings and the club is run on the basis of blind optimism, and silence about the finances. The Charlie Austin sale for just £4 million is a sign of things to come there.]

Back to Warnock. I wonder if his second spell at Palace was similar to the situation at QPR, where he agreed to run things until the club were able to persuade Alan Pardew to head back to Selhurst?

There was no animosity towards the club after he left and no bitter side-swipes towards anyone.

Which is most unlike Mr Warnock. He has spent much of his career being outspoken, bitter and twisted, which is why opposition fans tend to dislike him.

There are any number of examples of Warnock at his most Warnockian. I was reminded of probably the worst example, after seeing that Rotherham had two players sent off in Warnock’s first game in charge on Saturday.

Back in 2001, in his Sheffield United days, when he still had the look of a supply teacher trying to teach Chemistry, a league game with West Brom descended into chaos.

Gabby Logan takes up the story:

Despite the baggage that came with Palace appointing Warnock, he actually did a good job up to the point of his departure during the 2010 administration.

He appeared to have a better working relationship with Simon Jordan than most, and his team was generally a mix of experienced players with the right character for the Championship – like Shaun Derry, Danny Butterfield and Clint Hill, and kids.

While it seemed from his touchline rantings that he despaired of some youngsters efforts – Victor Moses in particular, Warnock bloodied a lot of young academy talent.

Most of the recent successes from the Palace academy –Moses, Nathaniel Clyne and Wilf Zaha – all made their debuts under Warnock, and several others, like Sean Scannell, Lee Hills, Kieron Cadogan and the 15 year old kid that went to Spurs were given opportunities.

A strange and peculiar chap is Neil Warnock.

Most of you are aware from school trips or parenting trips that there is a huge Dinosaur in the main hall at the Natural History Museum in London.

There is a plinth for Colin in the main hall at the Football League museum in Preston just waiting for him to finish managing.

Until he stops ‘just helping out’ the plinth is covered by a grubby beige Macintosh.

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