Alex Neil has not brought an entourage with him as he takes the helm at Stoke City
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Gary Rowett brought a six-strong team with him to Stoke City when he arrived in 2018 while Nathan Jones was joined by Paul Hart, Joaquin Gomez and Jared Roberts-Smith in a changing of the guard a few months later.
All-but Rory Delap would leave over the following couple of years, as well as long-serving goalkeeper coach Andy Quy, as the club was reshaped under Michael O'Neill. It was telling that Tony Scholes was quick to be impressed with the people O'Neill brought to Stoke, either visible on the sidelines or behind the scenes. Now O'Neill has gone but his replacement Alex Neil is not ripping it up and starting again.
“I go into every club and I’ve done the same,” said the new manager. “I went in Norwich with just myself for the first six weeks, Preston for the first five weeks, went into Sunderland and took one person. I know what I’m doing, I just need other people to help me do that and they become very important because I delegate them key roles to do what they do.
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“What you’ll find is that if you operate at Championship level you’ve got a skillset that’s capable and it’s very seldom you go into a club and you’ve got guys in key roles who can’t do it. All they need is a bit of guidance and understanding about what I want. My job is to bring clarity to what they are doing for me and get them to do it as well as they possibly can.
“One thing that’s been really important at every club I’ve been at and I think is vital is that there are some people who are Stoke through and through and those type of people can get undervalued sometimes. People who are Stoke through and through need to be at the centre of the club and that’s something I’ll look to maintain as long as they’re giving everything I expect every day.
“There are guys who have been here for a long time who are fundamental parts of the club. I will be looking to work with them as closely as possible and bring the best out of them I possibly can.”
Martin Canning: assistant manager
Neil's old mate from school ended up being his long-time teammate at Hamilton Academical. He replaced Norwich-bound Neil as Hamilton manager in 2015 and helped them stay in the Scottish Premiership before heading away on a coaching journey in 2019.
The 40-year-old has worked at clubs including Real Betis, Celtic, Leicester and Aberdeen as well as with Neil at Preston and Sunderland.
"We met in school – first year of high school," Canning said in an interview for the club website. "We became friends then and we've been fortunate that both of us have managed to have a playing career and then gone into coaching, and now obviously work together. So it's a long friendship and a good friendship."
Canning took caretaker charge of Sunderland for one match before leaving to follow Neil to Stoke.
He said: "Alex is his own man. He know what he's doing and he's very set in his own ways. I think my personality is a little bit more easy going. But Alex is obviously intense, he's very good at what he does, excellent at what he does. And I'm obviously there to support him.
"Like I say, having been through it and done the role, you understand more about what a manager does, what that role entails and how best to help. With the size of the club here, there's a lot of pressure on Alex as well but he takes that kind of thing in his stride and he deals with it.
"For me, it's about making sure I'm as supportive as I can be."
Rory Delap: first team coach
Former midfielder, long throw master, charity fundraiser and father of one of the leading prospects in English football and Stoke striker.
Delap hung up his boots in 2013 and spent time in charge of teams from under-15s to under-21s at Derby County, settling as under-18s boss before being taken up the A50 by Rowett four years ago. Now aged 46, he is a hugely-respected figure at Stoke, inside and out of the club, and his work specifically on set pieces has reaped rewards in the last few weeks.
John O'Shea: first team coach
A summer addition to the coaching staff after Sir Alex Ferguson supplied a reference to O'Neill.
It was Ferguson who brought O'Shea through at Manchester United, where he played almost 400 games and collected four Premier League title winner's medals. He played more than 250 times for Sunderland too and picked up more than 100 caps for Republic of Ireland. Not short of positive influences, then.
"It would be foolish if he ( Ferguson ) wasn't up there," O'Shea told Stoke City+ when asked about the best managers he has worked with. "But we had some amazing managers up at Sunderland too and a couple, when I've gone onto the coaching side of things, down at Reading as well. The managers I had there were very positive people too.
"Lots of people (have influenced me). That's what I'm hoping, that I should have picked up one or two things from them along the way."
David Rouse: goalkeeping coach
Well-travelled keeper coach was working for the Manchester City Football Group when he agreed to join Stoke in late 2019 with an ambition of getting back involved in day-to-day first team training.
He gave an insight into his job when he explained how goalkeepers need a thick skin and willingness to learn because if it is key to make mistakes as rarely as possible, they are inevitable from time to time – and chances are they will be costly.
“The thing with goalkeepers is that mistakes are part of your job,” he said. "The way I explain it to people is if you go past an oil refinery, there’s always a sign up which says it’s been so many days since the last serious incident. They have that sign up because they know there is going to be something and they pride themselves in the time between those accidents.
“With goalkeepers it’s similar with mistakes. You know they are going to happen and you have to pride yourself in keeping that distance between mistakes. When they do come you have to quickly brush them off and move on.
“When you work with goalkeepers it might be that they make a technical error, it might be a tactical or positional error and as a goalkeeping coach you have to take the emotional sting out of it and look at the cold, hard facts. You say, ‘You were moving when the shot was hit,’ or, ‘Your positioning wasn’t good there.’ Then you look at how you can improve that.
“I worked with Rob Green at QPR a few years after his mistake for England against the US and the way he had to deal with that was very difficult but you have to take the emotion out of it.”
Andy Cousins: head of football operations
Joined O'Neill at Stoke as head analyst in November 2019 and was re-titled as head of football operations in February this year following the exit of Alex Aldridge back to Millwall.
“Andy is involved in all aspects of trying to improve the team, whether it’s performance analysis or recruitment," explained O'Neill at the time. "His job brief has always been quite wide and varied and it made sense to go this way, it was the way the owners want to go."
He had previously worked in recruitment for Manchester City, where he was key to the signing of Liam Delap from Derby County, and as a scout for Northern Ireland. A walking football encyclopaedia, he can be spotted in the stands during matches as an extra set of eyes and ears for the coaching team.
Paul Walsh: head of sports science
Had been with Sunderland for six years when he decided to leave for Stoke in 2020, having previously worked alongside O'Neill with Northern Ireland.
A former winger, he played for clubs including Waterford, Limerick and Dundalk while graduating with a degree in sports and exercise science from the University of Limerick, then working with GPS training specialists Statsports.
Has also spent time working with Palermo as well as the Waikato Chiefs rugby side in New Zealand and Ulster and Leinster in Ireland.
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