Liam Manning takes charge of the U’s for the first time today. Having met the staff formally this morning he will work with the players in a first training session, with Chris Hogg as his right-hand man, then meet the press this afternoon as the U’s settle into life under their new Head Coach.
iFollow caught up with Chairman Grant Ferguson to ask what it is in Liam that made him the outstanding candidate to take over:
“Liam is the Head Coach and it’ s a very exciting proposition,” Grant said. “It was a very extensive process over 10 days before we got there. Names started flying off the shelves as soon as Karl left and we had something like 150 applications which we sorted through and replied to all of them. They came from all corners of the world and we went through every one of them because you never know - there could be diamonds in the rough.
“That filtered down to a long list of credible candidates and we did very detailed due diligence on them and then got down to a shorter list of people we wanted to interview.
“We looked at who was the best fit for the club and the right chemistry for the existing people here and interviewed ten people at that stage. Then the short list was four people and we held second interviews with them. At the end of the process I think we have ended up with an exceptional young man.
“He is very very clear what the short term goal is, given our league position, and what our goals are as a club. He is very mature and the amount of work he had done even before he came for an interview was hugely impressive. He knows this team inside out, knows the league inside out, and knows what he wants from day one. He has his first day totally mapped out, his training regime set up and he will deliver.”
See the full interview, plus a first interview with Liam, in iFollow.