Nigel Pearson has opened up on how his "survival mode" ensured Bristol City maintained a sense of togetherness during the difficult run of results towards the end of last year that could well have cost the Robins manager his job.
City's turnaround, which stretches to nine games unbeaten ahead of a game against relegation-threatened Wigan on Wednesday night, has been nothing short of impressive. It seemed a long way back for the manager when the pressure was intensified by a minority of supporters calling for his sacking following the defeat to West Brom on Boxing Day.
As the manager suggested himself in Thursday's press conference, the Lansdowns place value in the opinions of supporters but remained confident of Pearson's process. Their patience has been rewarded with this run of form that has lifted them up to 13th in the Championship, 10 points clear of the bottom three and seven points adrift of the play-offs.
That togetherness came to the fore in the away games following the Baggies' defeat with hard-fought points at Millwall and Coventry to help lay the foundations for the unbeaten run. There's no denying support for the manager was wavering from large quarters, but those performances and results have helped lift the spirits and added positivity heading into the final three months of the season.
Championship rivals Huddersfield Town appointed their fourth head coach of the season this week in Neil Warnock, Wigan axed Kolo Toure after just 58 days in charge while there have been 17 managerial changes in the second tier throughout the course of the campaign.
Speaking about the pressure and turnaround ahead of tomorrow's match, Pearson said: "What I have to do is to detach myself in some ways from how people feel because as long as I have a clarity about what I'm trying to do and what we are trying to do. Survival mode for me is about everybody pulling in the same direction.
"It's not going out on a limb and trying to survive myself. Every manager and coach that's out there, at some point, will be in survival mode. But that doesn't mean when pressure is on, to isolate yourself or anybody else. In my book anyway.
"It's about trying to pull together what we have in common and work out the important side of it to try and, it's about buying time.
"Time is one thing you don't really have a lot of in the modern game. I can tell you what it feels like to be sacked, not when you don't expect it but at certain clubs, they have a system where they will replace. That's fine - I don't have a problem with that."
Pearson referenced his time at trigger-happy Watford, where he was sacked after just 22 games, as a prime example of when owners have a limited threshold when it comes to hiring and firing managers. He added: "I've been at places where at Watford I lasted longer than I thought because of Covid, the pandemic stretched my contract a bit longer.
"I didn't expect to be there after May anyway and that's not me being facetious, it's a realistic point of view. When I went in there with Craig (Shakespeare) I said, 'let's go and have a bit of fun' and I think we did really well to turn things around.
"You have to understand the type of environment you go into and what clubs always have to do is ignore my needs as a manager. So when clubs feel it is in their best interests to make a change, they will make a change because there is always a threshold where the punters either lose patience or as importantly, there is a lack of belief in whoever is in the hot seat. Once you go past that threshold, things will change.
"Every club is different and you have to take everything into consideration. Don't ever think it's an easy job for owners.
"At this place, for example, our owners here care what the fans think, they care what it means in the public domain and there are other clubs where it's purely on a business sense. It's very hard to generalise but there are lots of factors which will have an influence on pulling that plug.
"The other big thing is financial stuff. It depends on exit clauses and all of that type of stuff. That's it."
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