Stuart Pearce has revealed why he chose to play David James as a striker in Manchester City’s match against Middlesbrough back in 2005.
The 61-year-old spent over two years as the manager of City’s reserves before eventually becoming the club’s permanent manager of the senior side, taking his total time at the Manchester club to five years between 2002 and 2007.
In a Premier League match at home to Middlesbrough in May 2005, Pearce became known for one of the oddest moments in top-flight history after he brought James, a goalkeeper, on to play in the centre-forward position for the final 15 minutes of a crucial match that could have seen City secure European football with a victory.
Now though, not far off 19 years to the day, the Englishman has shed some details on this eye-catching moment in the club’s history.
Pearce opens up on infamous James substitution
Speaking in a recent episode of the No Tippy Tappy Football podcast, Pearce said this when asked about the infamous moment, as well as how and why he came up with the idea.
He said: “Masterstroke. I put David James up front, last game of the season, Middlesbrough were seventh in the league, we were eighth, I was caretaker manager.
“On the Friday night, I sat at home and thought what can I do to get the City of Manchester really buzzing if the game is a draw? I came up with the idea, we’ll put James up front, we’ll get everything to him and the fans will go what the hell is going on here?
“So I came in the next day and said to my assistant Steve Wheatley, ‘I’ve got a brilliant idea, if we’re chasing the game and it’s a draw, I’m going to put James up front.’
“He looked at me and went ‘You’ve had some cracked-brain ideas in your time, this is the most ridiculous I’ve ever heard, I don’t want anything to do with it.’ They were his exact words.
“We had to beat them to get into a European place, a draw wasn’t good enough for us. Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink for Middlesbrough scored 35 minutes in, a free-kick right into the roof of the net, we’re 1-0 down.
“We equalise, it’s 1-1, I’m looking down the bench. I’ve said to Les Chapman, the kit-man ‘Get me a David James number one shirt, don’t tell anyone, especially James because he’ll be looking at me from minute one, get me up there.’
“75 minutes gone, I’m going over it in my mind, the game has gone a bit stagnant, we don’t look as though we can get a goal so I said to Nicky Weaver go and get warmed up, he looks at me and thinks what are you putting me on for?
“We take Claudio Reyna off, David James looks over and sees Nicky Weaver coming on, he’s walking over to me as if he wants to rip my head off. ‘What are you taking me off for when we need a goal?’
“I give him the outfield shirt and say go and play up front. Forgot to tell him who to play up front, he played as a number 10, he was like Bambi. Gareth Southgate and [Ugo] Ehiogu were the two centre-halves and they spent the last 15 minutes laughing at everything he did.
“He was scything people down, he had the worst 10, 15 minutes of football you’ve ever seen in your life. But on 82 minutes, we get a penalty, Robbie Fowler is taking the penalty for us, nothing to do with James.
“I’m sat there, the smuggest man in the world, looking at Wheatley going ‘the new Mourinho’ I said to him. [Mark] Schwarzer saves it.
“I turn the radio on, on the way home, last game of the season, we finish eighth in the league, Man City fans ringing in, ‘Our manager is an idiot, he played James up front’.
“If we’d have won the game, they’d have said I was an absolute genius. It was a great laugh and a great story eventually.”
Pearce’s throw of the dice
Since 2007 when Pearce left City to become the assistant coach of the England national team, he has only managed one club, which was Nottingham Forest where he only took charge of 32 games between July 2014 and February 2015.
Taking into account how putting a goalkeeper, who clearly couldn’t play outfield to a high degree, on to play as a striker didn’t particularly turn out as well as he’d hoped, it’s no real surprise to us that Pearce wasn’t inundated with offers to manage many top-flight sides.
However, given the progression that City have made since 2005, this moment can now be looked back on as a rather memorable and amusing incident in Premier League history.