MONK FINALLY GETS HIS MAN
Patience rewarded as Owls boss brings in his own coaching staff
GARRY MONK and Carlos Corberan have put their stamp on their club’s coaching staffs – nearly a year after taking over in the case of the Sheffield Wednesday manager.
The Owls have added long-time Monk allies James Beattie and Darryl Flahavan, while Andrew Hughes has joined from Steel City rivals Sheffield United.
New Huddersfield Town head coach Corberan has also made three backroom additions, and whilst the 37-year-old is reunited with people he has worked with before, Jorge Alarcon, Narcis Pelach and Linas Treigys further the more youthful feel the Championship club are trying to create.
Monk took over as Owls manager in September but was unable to change the Hillsborough coaching staff.
Beattie, his assistant at Swansea City, Leeds United, Middlesbrough and Birmingham City, was put on gardening leave by the Blues after Monk’s departure, and with the Owls apparently unwilling to pay compensation, remained there for the whole of last season.
Goalkeeping coach Flahavan, a former team-mate of Monk’s at Southampton, also worked with him at Leeds, Middlesbrough and Birmingham.
Aitor Karanka, who replaced Monk’s coach-turned-Birmingham predecessor Pep Clotet this summer, released Beattie, Flahavan and another long-term Monk associate, Sean Rush, on Tuesday evening.
Hughes was Sheffield United’s Under-23s coach until being replaced by former Barnsley and Leeds United manager Paul Heckingbottom this summer.
The 42-year-old former Leeds player also coached at Huddersfield and Rotherham United, amongst others. His job title at Hillsborough is first-team coach.
Monk’s attentions will now turn to overhauling a squad which underperformed again last season, finishing 16th in the Championship, and are due to start next season on minus 12 points.
A host of senior players have left, some released, others rejecting new contracts.
Amongst those linked to come in is former on-loan defender Frederico Venancio, surplus to requirements at Vitoria Guimaraes.
Venancio made 25 starts in all competitions in 2017-18.
Former England striker Beattie’s main responsibility will be finding more goals from a side which misfired badly at home last season and currently has Jordan Rhodes as its only senior striker.
Huddersfield are also looking to move in a different direction, sacking manager Danny Cowley and replacing him with Corberan in an attempt to move towards a younger squad, more aesthetically-pleasing football and a return to the continental-style management structure abandoned to lure Cowley last September.
All three new coaches have worked with Corberan before, and will join the existing staff where Danny Schofield, another the Spaniard knows well from working alongside him at previous club Leeds, has been promoted to head up the new B team.
Spaniard Alarcon, who has a PhD in sports science, has been an assistant coach in Qatar and Spain. Before that, he worked alongside Corberan in Saudi Arabia and Cyprus. Alarcon was fitness coach at Al-Nassr when Corberan was assistant coach of the Saudi Arabian Pro League club.
When the latter was put in charge of Ermis Aradippou in 2017, he brought Alarcon in from Cypriot First Division rivals Anorthis Famagusta.
Compatriot Pelach, known as Chicho, is only 31 but has already held two head coach jobs, with third-tier Spanish sides UE Figueres and Peralada, Girona’s reserve side.
It is with his hometown club that Pelach has spent most of his career, his 14 years as a Girona player, Under-23 coach and assistant manager coming to an end in November.
Afterwards he spent two months in England, at Manchester City and Leeds, where Corberan was an assistant coach who also took charge of the Under-23s.
Lithuanian Treigys joins from Leeds’s Under-23s, following three years as an analyst for his national team. He has also coached in Spain. Whilst the Terriers
are yet to sign any first-team players since Corberan’s arrival, they have added nine academy scholars.
Centre-backs David Adewoju and Jeremy Stewart, right-back Neo Eccleston, winger Conor Falls, left-back Charles Nduwuisi-Ondo, central midfielders Donay O’Brien-Brady, Brodie Spencer and Sonny Whittingham have joined from Millwall, Hendon, Chelsea, Glentoran, Millwall, Tottenham Hotspur, Cliftonville and Bradford City respectively.
Central midfielder Michael Stone has also joined the Young Terriers from Stoke City but will not sign a full scholarship as he continues his education elsewhere.