Who are the favourites to be the next Huddersfield Town manager?

Andre Brietenreiter has deemed League One beneath a coach of his abilities, despite the fact he signed a two and a half year contract with a team hovering precariously about the relegation zone to League One, then could only manage two victories in 13 games in charge. I’m glad the German has left now and given us time to achieve a fresh start but it seems a bit rich that he’s walking away because he thinks he’s too good for the level the club is playing at, when he had a part in us ending up at that level (though obviously there are many, many other factors in Town’s relegation). Breitenreiter walking away from Town after guiding them to League One feels a lot like someone soiling their own bed and then complaining about the smell. 

So you can probably sense that I’m not too disappointed to see the German leave Huddersfield Town, apart from the fact it makes us look like even more of a basket case club. I think the best thing he did at Huddersfield Town was in his press conferences, where he called out the bad behaviour of some players, but his actual management of games was poor even when you make allowances for the circumstances he was thrust into. Brietenreiter has been keen to point out that Town were in a bigger mess than he was led to believe when he took on the job but I still think he exaggerated some of the issues behind the scenes to help protect his reputation.  

I was going to focus this article on Breitenreiter’s exit but I think I’d rather look to the future and consider what the next coach might look like. So instead, I’m going to take a look at the current bookie’s favourites to take over at Town.

Liam Rosenior – 4/1 – Bafflingly short odds for someone who won’t want the job

Rodenior had the confusing scenario of narrowly missing out on the Championship Manager of the Season award, after making the shortlist, and then getting the sack. They were just outside the relegation zone when he took over as head coach in the 22/23 season, then guided them to comfortable safety in 15th then this season narrowly missed out on promotion with a 7th place finish. 

While Rosenior is a highly rated coach and would be a coup for the club if we could get him, I just can’t see this happening. I suppose Hull and Huddersfield are close enough that he most likely wouldn’t need to relocate but an up-and-coming coach wouldn’t need to drop down to League One for their next job, so I don’t get why Town would be an attractive proposition. Particularly given how much of a basket case we must seem like with the frequency of manager’s leaving lately and the talk of players not caring about the club. 

I think Rosenior’s position as favourite just shows that the odds aren’t a reflection of what’s likely and just what bets the bookies have taken so far and in a relatively small market like this, a few bets can change things quickly. I could be wrong but this doesn’t feel like a likely candidate.

Another reason this potential candidate doesn’t smell right is that the main criticism of Rosenior’s time at Hull has been his negative tactics, which obviously has been an issue for Town under Darren Moore and we wouldn’t want to repeat that problem again.

Nigel Pearson – 6/1 – Not exactly exciting but experienced and tough  

Nigel Pearson isn’t a name that will excite fans but maybe it should. He’s vastly experienced and is a tough task master, and we probably need that sort of stern leader at the helm to keep our players in check. He’s best known for his two long spells as Leicester manager where he did fairly well. He’s most recently managed Bristol City for a settled but perhaps unspectacular period where he guided them through Covid and had them performing pretty well but was eventually sacked when results tailed off a bit. 

I don’t believe Pearson has ever managed in League One, so may also be unwilling to drop to that level. I’m equally unsure about his willingness, with his age and experience, at his willingness to operate in Town’s structure of having the head coach work underneath a sporting director who has a lot of influence over the day-to-day operations of the team. (I have a feeling this could have been a sticking point for Andre Breitenreiter too, as many managers dislike having suits breathing down their necks).

If Pearson was willing to take on the job, I think he’d most likely be a safe and dependable option that would be able to steady the ship at Town. It’s not likely he would massively over-achieve but he also wouldn’t be a huge risk either. After so much managerial turbulence, someone who can be a safe hand at the tiller and just get on with the job might be a good thing.

Steve Cooper – 8/1 – Another unlikely candidate

Cooper is still seen as a hero to Nottingham Forest fans for guiding them to the Premier League (thanks to two dodgy VAR calls that I’m still not shutting up about!) but is out of work and available. Even though he’s looking for work, I’d expect he’s holding out for a better job than an ambitious League One team (in need of a squad overhaul and a habit of sacking managers at the drop of a hat). 

Unless I’m missing something, I just can’t see how this one adds up. Maybe we’re willing to break the bank in terms of wages or are offering a huge amount of spending money for transfer to our next manager but even then, few managers are willing to drop one league from their last job to get work, never mind two. So I think Steve Cooper will happily wait for a Championship job to come along. In fact, I think he’s been linked with the vacant Hull job, which shows that top-half Championship teams are interested in him.

Michael Duff – 12/1 – A repeat offender in the Town manager rumour mill

Michael Duff was heavily linked in with a move to Town before André Breitenreiter’s appointment, so this one made sense when I first saw it. Then I remembered that all the stories about Duff allegedly having interviews and haggling about his living arrangements were completely made up (according to Kevin Nagle). So it may be that this rumour may just be the same fake news as last time that is still circulating. 

However, Michael Duff would actually make sense for Town. While his last job at Swansea was a failure (mostly due to a mismatch between playing philosophy) he has done well in his past jobs, notably guiding Barnsley to the League One playoffs where they lost to Darren Moore’s Sheffield Wednesday. Prior to his spell at Swansea he was regarded as a promising, up and coming manager. He’s got something to prove after struggling in south Wales and I wouldn’t be too disappointed to see him come to Town. 

Mike Williamson – 12/1 – An interesting option without bags of experience 

Mike Williamson will be smarting at the moment after his MK Dons team suffered the heaviest semi-final defeat in playoff history last week when they lost to Crawley Town  8-1 on aggregate. Even though his team was spanked, he’s still down well to guide them to that point in his first season managing a football league club. He’s previously been a player-manager at Gateshead for several seasons, so isn’t completely wet behind the ears but doesn’t have a wealth of experience at a high level.

Williamson is the only manager on the list so far that is in a job and would therefore require compensation paying for him to come to Town. I’m not sure if we’d be willing to pay a significant sum to get a manager to come., seeing as we’ve been having to fork out so much getting managers to leave in recent seasons.

Williamson is a young coach who likes to play a possession-based, passing game, which he’s implemented in League Two with MK Dons and the National League with Gateshead. I can see how a manager that knows how to play attractive football effectively in the lower leagues would be a good option, particularly if Town are keen on implementing a new identity. 

If we do go down this route of picking a manager that wants to play attractive passing football, and we tell him to do that at Town then we absolutely must back him. You can’t just expect the manager to magically turn poor players into tiki-taka masters because they’ve put them through a few training drills. So if we go for a change in philosophy then it’s got to be matched with proper investment in the playing squad.

Alex Neil – 14/1 – Another safe pair of hands

Somehow Alex Neil is only 42 years old despite being in management for as long as I can remember and looking pretty grizzled from the experience. He struggles at Stoke in his most recent job, but many other decent managers have gone there and failed too. Prior to that he took Sunderland when they were in a state of constant chaos and guided them to promotion out of League One and back to the Championship. That experience at Sunderland may be very relevant, in terms of transferable skills, for sorting out Town and making them competitive.

Neil is like a few others on this list, steady but not exciting. But he gives off a vibe that he doesn’t take any guff from anyone, so would be a good man to send in to sort out the issues in the dressing room. 

Why the manager is likely to be someone else

There was a time when the club was leakier than a sieve but these days there are few reliable sources of inside information. So nobody truly knows what’s happening behind the scenes and these odds only represent the betting patterns of outsiders speculating and making best guesses. So I have a feeling that the names probably won’t be Town’s next manager. 

Thinking back to the way the club has spent money on player transfers so far, they have tended to go for players with lots of potential but also an element of risk too. Healey had been prolific in France but had struggled for game time at Watford. Radulovic was banging them in relentlessly in the frozen wastelands he came from but can he do it in the Championship? Radiono Balker’s stats made it seem like he should be able to transfer over to the English game but he had only played abroad previously. So we invested in players that weren’t proven but if they did well they could do very well and be worth far more than we paid for them. I have a feeling that we might want to take a similar, risky approach to our next managerial appointment. Which makes most of the above list too safe. 

A manager suchas Nigel Pearson, Alex Neil, Steve Cooper or Michael Duff would come with a lot of experience and would be a stabilising influence behind the scenes. They would not be as easy to manipulate and probably want more say on off-the-field matters, which might be offputting but I think we may need that kind of personality given the doubts that exist about our current Sporting Director. Rosenior and Williamson are the ones that fit the template of exciting, up and coming managers. Though I think Rosenior might be a bit unrealistic and I’m not sure how willing Williamson’s parent club would be to let him go. 

It’s also worth remembering that until a few hours before he was appointed, nobody was talking about André Breitenreiter when he was appointed a couple of months ago. So the bookies and “in the know” journalists were completely blindsided. That could well happen again. 

I have heard quite a lot of other names that aren’t on the above list bandied around in the last few days that I’ve not put here. Some are more fanciful than others. The truth is that we won’t know for sure until it’s confirmed by the club but it’s good fun to speculate anyway. If you have any inside knowledge or wild guesses, feel free to put them in the comments below. 

All the above odds were taken from a page on Betting Odds and were accurate at the time of writing. It’s very likely that they will change quickly over time, as even small bets can influence a market like this dramatically. I won’t give out any lectures about the rights and wrongs of betting in general, but I would not recommend betting on this particuar market*.

*(Unless your Kevin Nagle’s moustache stylist and have inside information that you can use to your advantage.)