When record-breaking coach Michael Skubala decided to move to Bristol City last month, Lincoln City immediately appointed Chris Cohen and Tom Shaw to the vacant role.
Within thirty minutes, the Imps’ title-winning manager had gone, and his support staff had stepped up to the plate to take the reins. It was a day of upheaval and uncertainty, nothing more, and very quickly we settled into the new rhythm, rather than weeks of speculation.
Speaking on the excellent Business of Sport podcast, Imps’ CEO Liam Scully explained exactly how that process was completed quickly and decisively, but with enough planning and forethought for fans to be sure it’s the correct move for this moment.
“Working with Michael Skubala, we had been developing the systems and processes, and what day-to-day life looks like at the training ground,” said Liam. “I absolutely don’t want to take anything away from Michael as our head coach. He was definitely a huge part of our success.
“But equally, it wasn’t just down to him. A large number of people contributed to that, both at the training ground and across the whole club. In our evaluation, when we thought this might be happening, we asked ourselves: What do we need to do next? The biggest thing we felt we wanted was continuity.
“Equally, we’re not romantic about that. We’re not naive. We tested that with external applicants. We tested what it could look like if it wasn’t the same. Is it one point of difference, or 10 points of difference? Ultimately, the question we continually asked ourselves was: what is best for Lincoln City right now?”
The answer to that question is always better with hindsight, and asking whether Michael Skubala was the right appointment at the time wouldn’t yield a solid answer. We know now that he was, of course, but hindsight is a wonderful thing.
However, you can preempt hindsight a little by doing a full and frank assessment and being as prepared as possible without knowing future variables, which leads us to Chris and Tom.
“We do have outstanding people, and I’m really proud and privileged to work with great people such as Chris Cohen and Tom Shaw, who are our head coaches.
“But the belief isn’t just about doing the right thing for them as human beings, although that is part of it. It’s about what we’ve designed, what day-to-day life looks like, the amount of disruption, or lack of disruption, and what we believe we can have going forward. That is ultimately why we’ve reached that decision.
“We definitely didn’t go: how can we do something a bit weird and a bit quirky? That wasn’t the intention. But when we felt it was the right solution, we also didn’t sit there thinking: No, we can’t do that because nobody else does it. I think that’s a key difference for us.”
It might feel like we’re doing things differently, but not for the sake of it. There is an element of the unknown moving into the new season, but even with Michael, the same would have applied. For Chris and Tom, survival is success but from an outside perspective, not expected, so what looks like failure for them is only the same as what looked like failure for Michael.
I’d definitely recommend a full listen of the podcast. I’ll drop one more article on it later today, but you should definitely check it out.