IF Chris Cohen can have the same impact at Stoke City as he has had at Lincoln City and Luton Town then it should be an interesting time ahead at the bet365 Stadium.
It might be difficult to pinpoint how much credit to give a coach behind the manager but Cohen, who is still only 37 and stepped over the white line early due to injury, has had an impressive start to his second career in football. He cut his teeth in the youth set-up at Nottingham Forest, where he had been a hero as a player, and then, with Nathan Jones, helped guide Luton Town to the cusp of the Premier League before learning valuable lessons in a short stay with Southampton.
He returned to the training pitch at Lincoln in League One, getting a call to assist interim manager Tom Shaw last November and staying to work with new boss Michael Skubals. The side was 12th on New Year’s Day but went on to pick up more points than everyone bars top two Derby and Portsmouth in the final four months – and only because Derby and Portsmouth played more matches. Twenty games, 12 wins, two defeats, 36 goals for and 11 against as they missed out on the top six by a whisker.
Gary Hutchinson: It’s hard to be exact as I wasn’t privy to the training, but it feels like we had a vastly experienced coach who added value to the backroom staff. Often, he would spend the first half of the game from a vantage point, watching alongside our analytics guy, collecting information to be delivered at half time. Logan Hughes, who was head of analytics at the time, spoke of how his impact had been much more obvious when Cohen joined the staff, as he helped bridge the gap between analytics and the rest of the coaching staff, acting as a conduit between the numbers and the players.
I think that’s a vital role, being able to change raw data into bite-sized observations. Also, bear in mind our good run coincided with him joining – I think he was only involved in two defeats in the four months he was with us.
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