Football has never quite known what to do with joint managers, which is perhaps why the idea always feels slightly unusual when it comes around again, as it has at Lincoln City this week.
Two men sharing the same dugout can sound progressive, muddled, brave or desperate, depending on the club, the results and, usually, how long it takes before the first bad run arrives.
We are now in that space with Chris Cohen and Tom Shaw, but the concept itself is nothing new. Across the years, clubs have tried it for all sorts of reasons: continuity, panic, sentiment, internal promotion, or simply because two candidates looked stronger together than apart.
Jordon Brown and Ryan Strachan, Peterhead
Jordon Brown and Ryan Strachan took over Peterhead in March 2023, initially as joint player-managers, after the dismissal of David Robertson. It was not a glamorous entry point. Peterhead were bottom of Scottish League One, low on confidence, and already in a position where survival looked increasingly difficult.
They did not keep the club up. Peterhead finished the 2022/23 season with just three wins from 36 league matches, drawing seven and losing 26. They scored 19, conceded 84 and ended the campaign ten points adrift at the bottom. In most cases, that would be enough to send a new managerial experiment into the bin before the summer had properly started.
Instead, the club stuck with them. There had clearly been enough in their handling of the squad, even during a losing run, to convince Peterhead that the problems went deeper than the dugout. The decision was rewarded quickly. In 2023/24, Brown and Strachan led the side to second place in Scottish League Two, with 16 wins, 12 draws and eight defeats. They missed out on the title, but it was a proper recovery from the wreckage of the previous season.
The following year brought the prize. Peterhead won League Two in 2024/25, taking 66 points from 36 matches and edging clear at the top. Their return to League One in 2025/26 was steadier, with a fifth-place finish, 12 wins and 43 points, but it still represented a club that had gone from demoralised relegation to promotion and consolidation within three seasons.