Millwall, QPR, Sheffield Wednesday and Bristol City decisions suggest new trend is emerging
Younger managers are becoming a preferred choice in the Championship, suggesting a shift away from older, more experienced managers.
Recent changes in the Championship suggest that older managers are considered more suitable for short-term fixes rather than long-term projects.
The likes of Neil Warnock and Tony Pulis may find it harder to secure managerial roles in the future, as clubs opt for younger managers with fresh perspectives.
It’s the time of the year where football clubs, and their owners, start getting a little twitchy on the trigger and, ultimately, it has been pulled on a number of occasions, or managers and clubs have decided to mutually part ways after a start to the season that has been short of where they had expected it to be.
Indeed, in the Championship things have been no different, and the changes at Sheffield Wednesday, Millwall, Queens Park Rangers, and Bristol City suggest an emerging trend is occurring in the second tier.
A shift change in the Championship?
Danny Rohl is in at Wednesday, Joe Edwards is in at Millwall, Liam Manning is heading to Bristol City and Martí Cifuentes is in at QPR.
All four are either in their mid to late 30s or early 40s, and all four have little in the way of Championship managerial experience – Manning is perhaps the one you’d call the most experienced in the EFL and he is hardly an old head.
All deserve their shot, of course, and it is in part natural that new and fresh faces come in – as in any job – but the fact that so many clubs seem to be turning their heads towards these new names suggests that there is a general preference running through the boardrooms of football clubs to try and establish a longer-term project under a younger name in a bid to get results.
Are the veterans’ days numbered?
It’s hardly a new phenomenon seeing clubs opting to go for the younger option with a potentially fresh outlook on the game, but the recent changes in the Championship all closely together suggest that perhaps the older guard are getting shunned a little more, or will start to be.
The likes of Neil Warnock and Tony Pulis, for example, have wealths of experience – and the former in particular showed that he has still got it as he guided to Huddersfield to safety last year before making his exit from them earlier this season – but more and more the older managers, who perhaps have a more no-nonsense style of football associated with them, appear to be put into one category: firefighters.
Would any club bring in such a figure at the moment and give them a long-term project such as they are with the younger faces? Probably not.
Of course, time is an element to consider and an older manager might simply be thinking about calling it a day on their career instead of embarking on some ‘three-year plan,’ but ultimately it seems more than that.
Change could be afoot, then, until Warnock or Mick McCarthy are needed with three months to go as a club flirts with relegation…
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