Michael Skubala was not joking when he suggested Sean Dyche might struggle to recognise him were they to bump into each other in the street. “I’ve met Sean a couple of times,” said the Leeds caretaker manager. “But he probably doesn’t remember me.”
He and Dyche should be rather better acquainted by the end of Saturday afternoon’s Premier League fixture at Goodison Park, where the latter is hoping his new Everton side can leapfrog Leeds and, for the moment at least, escape the bottom three.
It promises to be an intriguing tactical duel between the alpha male Dyche and the former England futsal coach who readily acknowledges he is very much an accidental manager.
Although there were times during Dyche’s Burnley tenure when he and Everton made eyes at each other, Skubala was never meant to leave his role as Leeds’ Under-21 manager to fill in for the sacked Jesse Marsch, quite possibly until the end of the season.
“I didn’t expect to be here to be honest,” acknowledges the 40-year-old former PE teacher who knows that decent results at Everton and at home against Southampton next weekend would secure him the post until June. “I’m happy in my Under-21 role. Rightly or wrongly, I have no planned route in coaching. I just enjoy the job. I’m doing from day to day and try to get the best out of players.”
Nonetheless Skubala has been “relishing every minute” since the “white smoke” that the Leeds owner, Andrea Radrizzani, had promised would waft over West Yorkshire failed to materialise and at least three potential successors to Marsch ended up remaining in their managerial roles.
With Chris Armas, Marsch’s former assistant, having been at Leeds barely a fortnight, the articulate, intelligent Skubala duly found himself promoted centre stage as it became increasingly apparent that the board’s speculated first choice, Rayo Vallecano’s Andoni Iraola, would not leave until the summer.
Skubala’s varied CV has encompassed a stint as director of football at Loughborough University, technical work for Uefa, the aforementioned national futsal role and an assistant coach’s job with the England men’s Under-18s.
It is still very early days but, perhaps significantly, the Leeds centre-forward Patrick Bamford describes a caretaker who has presided over a 2-2 draw against Manchester United at Old Trafford and a 2-0 home defeat by the same opponents as “brilliant”, “fantastic”, “calm” and “unchanged by his promotion”.
Yet if it is possible that Victor Orta, Leeds’s director of football, and his fellow executives have stumbled across a hitherto hidden managerial gem, they will, equally, be the only ones to blame should things go wrong. As Radrizzani put it in a hastily deleted tweet shortly after Marsch’s exit: “We keep praying and making interviews.”
Even worse, some of those auditions were arguably offered for the wrong reasons. Almost exactly a year since Marcelo Bielsa’s sacking Orta and company still seem obsessed with reprising the Argentinian’s high-energy pressing game.
Considering Marsch was hired, largely, to continue that approach but has left Leeds one point and one place above the relegation zone, it rather begs the question as to whether this fixation with philosophy is misplaced. Maybe the system is the problem; perhaps this set of players are not quite as suited to intensively aggressive pressing as the bosses believe.
Whatever the reason, coaches with differing – or hybrid – tactical beliefs appear to have been overlooked. The danger with such dogmatism is that Leeds could very easily fall into the Championship.
After all, those Elland Road regulars calling radio phone-ins to reflect their puzzlement that the out-of-work, Champions League-winning Rafael Benitez has not been persuaded to accept at least a short-term contract appear unlikely to be perturbed if a few pressing principles are compromised so long as it it keeps their team in the top tier.
Right now there is a strong case for arguing Leeds could do with slowing things down, gaining a little more control of midfield and perhaps introducing a back three harbouring no inhibitions about operating a low defensive block when necessary.
At least they have four more points than bottom-placed Southampton – and, given the two teams meet on Saturday week, must have been relieved that talks between Marsch and St Mary’s directors broke down.
Instead another caretaker, Rubén Sellés, takes Southampton to Chelsea on Saturday before aiming to outwit Skubala. Sellés is the team’s third manager of the season, after Ralph Hasenhüttl and Nathan Jones. The 39-year-old Spaniard, who has acquired considerable backroom coaching experience in Greece, Russia, Azerbaijan, Denmark and Spain, seems keen to secure the job full time and can hardly do worse than Jones.
The latter presided over seven defeats in his last eight games but Southampton, like Leeds, have only themselves to blame for allowing abstract principles to trump practical pragmatism when it came to appointing Hasenhüttl’s successor.
They were swayed by suggestions from data analysts that Jones’s feat in guiding low-budget Luton to the Championship playoff semi-finals last season made him one of Europe’s top five coaches.
Yet laudable an achievement as that was it not only ignored an earlier, fairly disastrous, spell with Stoke but the more emotional, sometimes downright volatile, side to the Welshman’s character.
Many longstanding Jones watchers had feared that personality would not translate comfortably to a high-stress Premier League habitat and, sure enough, Southampton directors were left red-faced.
As Orta, Radrizzani and co have demonstrated at Leeds, managers are not the only highly paid club employees prone to making mistakes under pressure.
