Bigger Boys and Stolen Sweethearts

Neil Lennon is going to become the next manager of Leicester City. Bolton Wanderers will be playing League 1 football next season. Hyperbolic? Pessimistic? Maybe. But in a weird twist of strange logic, this could be a reverse psychology form of optimism - prepare for the worst, and when the worst doesn't happen, you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Lenny is as short as 6/4 for the Leicester job, the clear favourite. The next three candidates in the betting are Sam Allardyce (who has already distanced himself from the job) coming out to 6/1, newly Championship promoted Bristol City manager Steve Cotterill at sixes also and current Foxes midfielder Esteban Cambiasso at 10/1: it's time for panic stations.

Nigel Pearson had already been "sacked" once before at Leicester in February, displaying his questionable temperament by gripping James MacArthur around the throat, after he dared to fall into Pearson's personal space. Psycho. (If you're reading this Nigel, I think you're a lovely lad with a lot of love to give, you're just misunderstood). The club backtracked on these reports the morning after. The arrangement between the Foxes and Pearson suggests that this was not a working relationship that would last, despite what I would suggest is the greatest escape of Premier League history (Leicester stayed up despite spending a record amount of days at the foot of the Premier League; 139).

He might be a fan-abusing, player-threatening, journalist-hating bully, but he's good at his job. Or at least he was.

This all suggests to me that Leicester have had a replacement in mind for a while. And it seems as though that replacement is our very own Neil Lennon. It could go some way to explaining Lenny's lack of action in the transfer market thus far; so far, we've put it down to a lack of funds, or waiting for current contract situations to change, but maybe we've mistook a lack of action for a lack of interest.

If Leicester do make an approach for his services, I wouldn't expect Lennon to say no. It's almost as if we've been used as a stepping stone in his early managerial career - I'll stop before my bitterness shows.

However, I'm going to channel that bitterness into pessimism. Lennon goes. Some daft appoint like Steve Thompson or Stuart McColl comes in. Eidur jets off to China, Clough doesn't hit the heights of last season, Mark Davies does a Mark Davies, and Clayton doesn't come back until the January. Gary Madine scores three goals all season, we finish rock bottom of the Championship. Eddie Davies withdraws his entire BWFC bank balance and enjoys a long, happy retirement alongside Dave Whelan in the Caribbean. To rub salt into the wounds, Wigan stroll League One by a country mile, and we become the laughing stock of North West football. Oh wait, Blackpool. Thank God for Blackpool. Lennon won't keep Leicester up, but we're not bitter; we're too emotionally numb by this point to care.

It doesn't bear thinking about. But when you do allow yourself to listen to your inner Morrissey, it's a sad state of affairs.