Mark Fotheringham has been appointed Huddersfield Town’s new head coach. He is the fifth of Town’s last six managerial appointments to come with no significant experience of being the head coach of a men’s football team. In fairness, gambling on inexperience has paid off half of the time in the past, with Wagner and Corberan both overperforming with limited resources. But we’ve also seen Siewert and Schofield crash and burn too. So we know how much of a gamble it is to let someone take their first steps into management at Championship level, where the games come thick and fast with no margin for error or time to learn on the job.
Because Mark Fotheringham hasn’t worked as a permanent head coach anywhere previously, we don’t have anything to go on in terms of his track record. So instead, I’ve gone over his interview and filmed training session that the club released yesterday to look for clues to see what we might expect from our new head coach. Here’s what I found…
He doesn’t lack ambition – he’s talking about reaching the playoffs this season!
Maybe our new head coach is an optimist or a complete fantasist but he talks in his interview about his ambition to manage in the Premier League and how if we make the playoffs this season it will be the fifth consecutive year he’s been involved in a playoff campaign (though some of those were German relegation playoff campaigns – so hardly a badge of honour).
Reaching for the stars is admirable but I doubt there are few other people expecting Huddersfield Town to be repeating their trip to Wembley for the playoff final this season. While I’d never want to say never, it would be an incredible turnaround to go from second bottom at this stage of the season to top six by May. Nottingham Forrest pulled off a similar feat last season (and didn’t they love telling everyone about it!) but that was with a squad that was far superior to the one we have this season. I will more than happily eat humble pie when we’re celebrating our promotion in May 2023 and petitioning the council to build a statue of Mark Fotheringham in St George’s Square.
Someone needs to tell him Huddersfield isn’t a city
One basic blunder that Fotheringham repeatedly made during his interview was to refer to Huddersfield as a city. This is an easy mistake to make when he’s new to the area and is used to being in big cities like Berlin and Glasgow but given it’s literally in our name that we’re a town and we call ourselves Town, he could do with cutting that mistake out of future interviews.
If he needs help, it’s literally written on every piece of training gear that he’s wearing, the walls, the stationery stationary (thanks to yorkyterrier for the grammar help!), pens, you get the idea. If the problem persists then he could even consider getting himself a Huddersfield Town tattoo, though it may be a bit early for that, given many Town fans don’t expect him to last until Christmas (though I’m committed to giving him a fair chance, as it’s not his fault he’s not David Wagner).
He’s not here to make friends
Despite being asked a softball question about coaching big-name players at his previous clubs, Fotheringham used the question as an opportunity to answer one that wasn’t asked and made it clear he is not here to be anyone’s friend. I like this unnecessarily aggressive approach to answering questions and setting out his agenda. After Danny Schofield’s relaxed, nice guy approach failed, I think we need a taskmaster to give our players a roasting when they let their standards slip.
I don’t have any inside sources but my impression from observing from the outside is that Carlos ruled with an iron fist and things slipped significantly when he left. So having a head coach that looks like he’ll headbutt you if you dare to question his methods should be an improvement on Schofield, who was more the kind of coach that would take you for ice cream even if you hadn’t tried your best, just to make you feel better.
The challenge will be whether the players buy into Fotheringham’s methods or not. Tough guy coaches tend to either generate blind devotion from their players or breed resentment, depending on whether the players accept the disciplinarian’s authority or not. It’ll be interesting to see which way this goes.
He made a strange comment about “not demanding staff”
“I’ve no come in here as a young manager who’s demanding six, or seven coaches and physios and all that. I just want to come in and assess the staff and work alongside them and make them feel good about what they’re doing on a daily basis.”
Regardless of the comments made by Leigh Bromby, it seems likely that David Wagner was close to joining Town. I wonder if this comment about backroom staff might have been why he didn’t end up joining. Wagner would most likely have wanted his long-term number two, Christoph Buhler, to join him and potentially other members of his own backroom staff, alongside any number of other demands about how he would have wanted the organisation chart at the club setting up to favour him. Maybe Bromby and Hoyle couldn’t bend to Wagner’s demands, so decided to go with a more malleable option – this comment hints towards that but perhaps I’m speculating a bit too much.
Either way, I’m not sure I’d be so keen to agree to what Fotheringham has agreed to here. With no backroom team of his own, he is a lot more vulnerable and easier to sack. It’s also a lot harder for him to get the culture in place that he wants to achieve. While I’m pleased that Narcis Pelach has kept his job, as he proved himself to be a valuable asset in his time as caretaker, I’m not sure Fotheringham is being given a fair crack at the job if he isn’t being given the chance to assemble his own team of coaches too. Danny Schofield didn’t get that chance either and I think that was a large part in him struggling.
Fotheringham was at the Cardiff game
I think it shows just how much of a dark horse Fotheringham was for this job that he was able to attend the Cardiff game and nobody batted an eyelid. But the fact that he was in the stands for that game means he was able to witness a pretty competent, if flawed at times, Town performance and that should give him some ideas about what team and shape he wants to put out for Saturday’s trip to Reading.
At this stage, it’s hard to know what kind of football Fotheringham wants Town to play. He’s said he wants to play attractive football, but also wants to win games and that he wants to be organised behind the ball. So that is all pretty meaningless, like the kind of made-up rubbish we all put at the top of our CVs about being self-starting, team players that thrive on challenges. It’s the stuff you say to get a job, the real test will be seeing how he sets up the team when there are actually points on the line.
He’s a bit like Brian Glover in Kes on the training pitch
Being an ex-player that hasn’t retired all that long ago, he clearly isn’t afraid to get involved with the drills he sets up. In the clips of training, he can be seen showing the players exactly what he wants the players to do. This makes me wonder, given our lack of depth in central midfield, could he pull himself out of retirement and consider player-management? I suspect he’s probably not quite in good enough shape for that but it’s not such a bad thing that he’s able to put on his boots and literally show the players what he wants.
However, it did remind me of that famous scene from the film Kes, where Brian Glover’s character starts playing football against the kids he’s supposed to be teaching and gets a bit too carried away.
He’s picked up that the team are too quiet
“We’re too quiet, I wanna hear yizz”
The club lost a lot of big personalities in the summer and as a group, I think they’re a bit quieter now. It’s good that our new head coach is encouraging the players to be more vocal with each other. I think at times on the pitch I’ve picked up that there’s been a lack of communication and that’s led to mistakes being made.
There is also the possibility that the players were just scared stiff of their new head coach and didn’t want to risk getting anything wrong. Things will no doubt relax as they get used to him but he gives off a vibe like he’s got a baseball bat with a nail through it in the boot of his car, so it’s understandable that the players are a bit subdued in their first training session with him.
He’s very sweary
Whoever edited the video of the training session had to mute the sound over and over to take out the expletives from the talks Fotheringham had with the players. It seems that he’s one of those people that use expletives like most people use punctuation. Those that are sensitive to such things might want to avoid being too close to the touchline during his tenure at Huddersfield Town.
I personally don’t mind a bit of industrial language if it helps to get the point across. I don’t think it’s big or clever but it’s not exactly the worst thing in the world either.
There’s carrot as well as stick
Despite Fotheringham saying that he wasn’t here to make friends, he did finish his training session by saying some nice things to his players. He praised the senior players for supporting the younger ones and talked about how important it was to be a family and how they needed to stay together. I think this kind of stuff is important for him as he needs to show them that he’s on their side to get them to buy into what he’s doing.
On the surface, he seems like quite an angry and aggressive man but he also showed that he has a softer side that will most likely be needed for the younger players in the group that are coming through. Hopefully, he’ll learn to deploy the carrot and the stick at the right moments depending on which is needed the most.
Very amusing, TS. I particularly enjoyed the description of covering all the bases in his style of football akin to what one might write in a CV.
Like you, I’m not fond of swearing for swearing’s sake. But I’ll live with that if he gets the team playing for him.
Good point about city/town. It’s that sort of mistake that can distance some fans.
The truth is we really have no idea what to expect. I clearly remember David Wagner’s first match in charge, away at Sheffield Wednesday, November 2015. Whilst we lost that match 3-1 (I think Scannell scored for Town), there were immediate signs that Town were playing much more on the front foot and my recollection is feeling optimistic despite the defeat. So, whilst 3 points would be wonderful on Saturday, I just want to ‘feel good’ again about Town’s performances; so I’m just hoping that, in the short time available, Fotheringham can show us something positive.
There is no excuse for the faux pass made during the interview and they should have been edited out from the video. It’s not surprising that the film & video production team are unprofessional its just another poor example of how the club is being run at the moment.
A great article TS many interesting observations but you may have gone overboard with his heavy handedness, his previous bosses have remarked on his supportive nature with players, but I feel the stick is definitely more appropriate at the moment.
I also like the way the club takes a step into the dark with their appointments rather than plumping for yet another bore roller-coasting on the managerial merry-go-round.
I loved your clip from “Kes” of the magnificent ex-wrestler Brian Glover – one of the best films ever, I’ve seen his grave in West Brompton Cemetery, close to Chelsea football ground and alongside other luminaries such as: Emmeline Pankhurst; Bernard Levin; Samuel Cunard and John Wisden.
Totally agree, Joe Blood, about Kes. Not forgetting the excellent Colin Welland of Z Cars game. Showing my age now.
In case you missed this, if you’re a Kes fan and a Greg Davies fan, this was magnificent. If it doesn’t bring a tear to your eye, you must be as hard as Mark Fotheringham! https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sg99OdsvfXI
The only thing that Huddersfield Town has stationary are their defenders. Think your mean stationery.
Ooops, I’ve corrected it now. In my defence, the stationary defenders also have Huddersfield Town written them in several places and it’s even easier to read when they’re not moving.
I read that he turned on a German media representative who innocently suggested that he should show a team the Braveheart movie to motivate them. If we can get the opponents to wear kits depicting English uniforms of that era he’ll probably deck the lot of then before they get out of the tunnel. Maybe its a good thing he’s not bringing his own back room staff in as we probably haven’t got enough police in the town to cope.
Got someone at last. Media say it’s a big risk for Town, it is for him as well ! One or two of the players performances have dropped this year, so we need a tough taskmaster. In the beginning at least (look out Thomas and Russell ) . A clean broom and all that.
He certainly talks himself up though subtitles may still be needed on occasion as with Carlos. One thing he did say was he wanted the players to have freedom to play, not just stick rigidly to the “system” in place. Previously we had two opposites in Carlos’s rigid styles and Danny Scofields no particular style – do what you want. I was disappointed that he wasn’t questioned on what style of football we could expect. Playing out from the back or long ball. Perhaps a bit of both, who knows. The first match should hopefully answer a lot of questions.
Looks Scary Some of the Players still think there on Summer Holidays Casual no Fight Sulking think this Guy is a Hard Nut Will be a Big Success and Drive them up the Championship Table
Yes, an entertaining and insightful read, TS. Thanks a lot! However, I guess I think your disappointment about Wagner not returning shows through a bit, and you’re being a tad harsh on the new guy. I’m (for once) cautiously optimistic, not because of anything pertaining to what you do discuss, but because of what you don’t go into, namely his close association with Magath, which must surely count for a lot. Fingers crossed, but I’m thinking a top half finish is something we can reasonably hope for, which would be something given where we are now.
Our new coach reminds me of a lad on telly who always wore a suit and was the heavy “mr fixer” for the main man,
Mark seems to have the language to scare the boots off Russell, Thomas & co, and I liked his words on how he likes how to play his football, but that will have come from his time at Fulham, Norwich, plus the apprenticship he has served in Germany, please no more sideways and backwards, very good article TS , but please Mark we are Town, never ever City. UTT.