The club will be led by two joint head coaches, Tom Shaw and Chris Cohen, during their Championship campaign
The last thing the Championship needs is another spying scandal, so when a lorry emblazoned with KGB parked up alongside Lincoln City’s training ground on Tuesday lunchtime there was laughter as staff pondered whether the Soviet Union were examining their set pieces. It shows the relaxed atmosphere at one of the second tier’s newest clubs, one that has witnessed a summer of change yet maintained continuity by appointing joint head coaches.
Tom Shaw and Chris Cohen have replaced Michael Skubala, who led the Imps to 103 points and promotion to this level for the first time in 66 years before leaving for Bristol City. It was a symbiotic appointment because while the former assistants were devising a sales pitch to the club’s hierarchy, the wheels were already in motion to promote from within. Their plan is to banish English football’s memories of Liverpool’s ill-fated pairing of Roy Evans and Gérard Houllier. The duo are doing final preparations for Saturday’s season opener at the Riverside against Middlesbrough, who have spent over £20m on summer signings – Lincoln have spent a quarter of that across their 142-year history, indicating the task ahead.
“The difference is that they’re put together by a football club, Evans and Houllier being the prime example, it’s two men just put together and told to go and do the same job,” says Cohen in the office he shares with Shaw. “Me and Tom have formed a relationship over the last few years where the club has seen our relationship as a pair of coaches and blokes evolve. We drive in together, we drive home together, we spend all of our days together, when we’re off, we’ll have a game of golf together.
“They understand that if it is going to work with any two coaches, then this is probably the one with the best chance because we see football the same way, we see life the same way, we see our principles are very, very similar. We obviously have differences in small decisions and nuances within everything, but principally we see the way that a football club should be run and the team should play very, very similarly. That gives us a really good chance.”
Lincoln is a forward-thinking club but the latest major decision is not about experimentation. The duo fit the club’s philosophy, having worked within academies giving them the skills to develop players, as they did with Jack Moylan who was sold to Cardiff for a record fee. Shaw and Cohen were key members of Skubala’s staff, taking on great responsibility and Lincoln were keen to reward their progression and give the squad continuity. The players have been told not to call them “gaffer or boss”.
They complement one another, with Cohen’s focus on the defence and Shaw the attack to share the workload. The pair are rarely side-by-side on the training ground, as they seek different perspectives, whether watching a session taken by the other head coach or the former Hull defender Paul McShane, while David Preece oversees goalkeeping.
“We do get to the end of some days and we look at each other and go: ‘Thank God we’ve got each other,’” says Cohen. “Thank God there’s two of us to do that, what we’ve just created on that day on the training pitch or gameplans. I’ve been an assistant for a long time, so I’ve had that relationship with managers where I’ve had their full trust, but there is a different feel about having the final decision and being sure that you’re making the right one. To have two of us to check and challenge each other and then come out with hopefully the best logical decision for the team.” The bickering, they say, is left for golf.
The club has handed out 14 new contracts since promotion, in addition to two permanent signings and three loans to maintain momentum. The 2016-17 run to the FA Cup quarter-finals brought prize money which was invested in a purpose-built training ground, having not had one before, which sits between a former RAF base and a potato field. Promotion means more income, allowing a £9m upgrade of the ground and training site, with further expansion planned.
One of the few things the pair do apart is holiday, which is when they found out they would be taking over, with Shaw in Greece and Cohen in Spain. “The first two or three days of our holidays were very hectic,” says Shaw. “We signed the paperwork and then enjoyed the last few days in the swimming pool. There was some emotion in our families,” says Shaw, looking at a photo of Cohen and him celebrating promotion with their children. “It was just a really nice moment in our journeys and our families know each other and really get on. So just really nice for us to be doing this together and a big moment in our careers.”
The visit to Sincil Bank has been jokingly used to illustrate the impact of relegation on West Ham but Lincoln are far more than a punchline. They are in the Championship on merit, despite being the bookmakers’ favourites to go down. A deserved 2-1 away win was secured over divisional rivals Derby in the Carabao Cup last weekend further proved their credentials.
“We hope we’re underestimated, we hope the big clubs in the division when they turn up at Sincil Bank underestimate how good our players are, how good our fans are, how good our stadium is to come to,” Cohen says. “We’re hoping that clubs take us for granted or underestimate us because it just goes back to that group of players in there that we back to the absolute hilt.
“We’re bringing a couple more recruits hopefully to help with the volume of the squad but as I said all along they’re an amazing group, amazing technically, tactically but the thing they’ve got is heart and passion which wins you games of football.”
The Riverside will be a key test of their credentials. “We will check and challenge each other through the week,” says Shaw. “We’ll have minor disagreements throughout the week to get to what we think is the right plan. And then by Thursday, Friday we’re super aligned and massively behind whatever decisions we’ve come to, with the support of all the people as well.”
