Liam Manning’s permanent departure from Huddersfield Town was confirmed last week. Few will have been surprised to hear he wasn’t coming back, given the short break he took to address what is clearly a long-term issue. Every sympathy should be extended to Manning and I hope well for his future but it also plunges Huddersfield Town back to the drawing board and having to pick yet another manager.
It’s tempting to say we’ve got to get this decision right. But we said that before Lee Grant was appointed. And before Michael Duff and all the other failed coaches that have quickly been in and out of the door. So while it feels like we’ve got to get this decision right, recent history suggests we may well get it wrong anyway.
Thoughts on Manning’s departure
I really feel for Manning and admire his bravery in holding his hand up and admitting he needed to take time out for himself and his family. Putting family first and prioritising your mental health are both admirable decisions; hopefully he will take the time he needs and return to management if and when he feels ready.
Sentiment aside, Manning’s short term in charge of Town was a mixed bag, with a few explosive matches earlier on where we did remarkably well with ten men, twice in a row but saw diminishing returns from then on. The early momentum stuttered, mostly because of his work trying to shore up the defence, which led to the goals drying up at the other end of the pitch too. In fairness, his time in charge was too short lived to draw definitive conclusions but there wasn’t a notable improvement over the Lee Grant spell, as was widely hoped.
Liam Manning was willing to drop down to League One to take on the challenge at town because he’d had a miserable spell at Norwich which culminated in him being sacked. But prior to that he’d had a decent track record and seemed like a good catch. In different circumstances, it’s quite possible that he would have thrived at Town but sadly we’ll never really know what he could have achieved if he didn’t have personal issues to deal with.
Stead and/or Drury may be an option
The obvious first consideration for replacing Manning would be the coaches that stepped up during his leave of absence, Jon Stead and Martin Drury. The results they achieved during their spell in charge look underwhelming on paper but fans that watched their games will have noticed an obvious improvement in the style of play. And their results could have looked a lot better if we hadn’t thrown away many points by conceding late goals in key games.
There was more purpose and grit on display when Stead and Drury were involved as well as using tactics that got the best out of the players they had available. Their media work was impressive too, with both of them communicating in a plain-speaking style that engaged well with fans, hardly surprising given they’re both from the Huddersfield area.
There are two main reasons why I wouldn’t want to appoint these two. Firstly, I don’t think a co-manager situation is a good way to arrange a football team. There needs to be a single person who makes the calls and takes responsibility. I think a job share makes it confusing to know who’s in charge and can get messy. This could be solved by one taking on the role of head coach and the other stepping down to assistant. Would either be willing to step aside for the other? My second concern is that neither of them have proper experience of being head coach. This was Lee Grant’s principal drawback when he was selected as manager and it was also the main reason he failed. It seems harsh to effectively punish these two for the failings of a past manager but after seeing a highly rated coach flounder when given the top job, it would seem too risky to go with inexperience again.
I wouldn’t be too disappointed with Stead and Drury carrying on, it would provide a small amount of continuity and they showed plenty of promise in their brief spell in charge. I don’t think I would be willing to take the chance on them though. For whatever reason, Huddersfield Town seems to be a tricky club to manage well. We’ve seen a lot of managers with wide experience and success with other teams struggle at Town for no obvious reason. I think it’s too big a job for inexperienced coaches to step up into.
Having said I wouldn’t like to see them as co-managers of Town, I do hope that they can continue in the coaching staff at Town. New managers typically like to bring in their own coaching team but it would be a shame to lose two coaches that seem to have a bit about them and who have a personal connection to the club.
What kind of manager do we want?
If Stead and Drury don’t get the nod then the top brass at Town will have to go back out into the managerial market and try to find someone they prefer. It’s quite likely this search is already well underway and there are rumblings online that interviews are taking place right now.
This summer is a bit different to last summer, as we now have a director of football (or is it sporting director?) in place, so we’re looking for a head coach not a manager. Chris Markham has already stated that he wants to embed a clear style of play at Town and recruitment of players and managers should fit around this. And as well as having to play an agreed style, they’ll also have to be willing to work underneath a director of football. Some managers like having someone else to deal with the higher level stuff so they can focus on coaching but plenty of others want to have control over things that often fall under the director of football’s remit.
Piecing it together from things people at the club have said, I suspect the overarching style we’re looking for is front-footed, attacking football that gets results and is exciting to watch. Though it’s hard to imagine any manager would say they prefer to play, back-footed, defensive football that rarely gets results and is boring to watch, even though that’s what we’ve ended up getting from most of our recent managers.
Who might it be? Naming names
It would feel weird to write this article without throwing a few names around, so despite not having any inside knowledge, I’ll speculate a little bit.
David Wagner is the name that always comes up when there’s a vacancy at Town but if he wanted to come back, I think he would have done already by now. I don’t think he’d be able to get the level of influence and control he had during his last spell, it could spoil the memories of the Premier League years if he returns and fails, he’s settled in Germany at the moment and I’m not sure he’d be willing to drop down to League One.
Having laid out practical reasons David Wagner is unlikely to return, I’d still be very excited if we were able to convince him to come back. Some of that is driven by pure nostalgia but I also think he’d be very effective in League One. Whipping the team into good physical shape, drilling them on 4-2-3-1 gegenpressing and the complete devotion he’d have from fans would probably be more than enough to get us competing at the top end of League One. Sadly, I can’t see it happening.
Grant McCann and Darren Ferguson have both been bandied around recently as potential candidates for the Town job. Neither are currently managing Peterborough, which is strange as they tend to take turns with that job. Ferguson is currently out of work and McCann is managing Doncaster Rovers. Both have got a reasonable track record and have probably had more ups than downs during their time managing in and around this level. McCann is my preferred option of these two but we’d have to cough up a compensation fee to Donny to prise him away and it seems like throwing money down the drain, considering the average shelf life of a Town manager.
Richie Wellens has also been suggested as a possible option. He launched a scathing but refreshing attack on his Leyton Orient players at the end of the season, suggesting they had wasted a year of their careers with their lacklustre performances. I don’t know much about him as a person but he’s another seasoned League One manager that would most likely be able to get something out of our squad. And having a reputation for holding players accountable might not be such a bad thing, even if it’s a tactic best used sparingly.
The most experienced name being meaningfully linked with our vacancy is Tony Mowbray, though he’s also been tipped to join to Blackburn too, so it could all just be idle speculation. Mowbray has vast experience but also has been away from football while he went through cancer treatment. Thankfully he seems to have been given the all clear and be in the market for a new role but I’m not sure the Town job would interest him, given he’s used to managing at a higher level and, from the outside, we must look like a basketcase due to the way we dispose of managers quicker than most people change their toothbrush.
In our current position, it seems likely any manager willing to take the job will be some combination of inexperienced, tarnished by a previous failure or a bit boring. Maybe, given our history of taking risks that don’t pay off, a boring option might be what we need.