The other day, Sheffield Wednesday effectively announced Dave Challinor as their new manager, and I expressed my view that this was a bad fit.
Not a universally popular opinion, it seems!
There may be some of you who want more of a detailed explanation as to why I have this view than the social media format allows, so, here it is.
I think the first thing to emphasise is that Challinor has had a fantastic career so far.
Regardless of resources, to go through a whole career with Colwyn Bay, AFC Fylde, Hartlepool and Stockport County and only ever finish in the play-off places or automatic promotion spots every season since 2010/11 is quite remarkable.
It’s one thing having the money, but you’ve still got to mould those individual players into an efficient team, and the 51-year-old has done that over and over again – so I take nothing away from him, and his seven promotions & FA Trophy.
Sheffield Wednesday, however, is a different beast. A goliath of League One, and one of the 15 biggest clubs in English football.
From the responses to my post, it may have got interpreted as me saying people can’t step up to that sort of club from the lower levels: of course they can. But it requires some different skills.
Bad fit for me. Seems to be a decisive manager who likes to get his hands across a club, which works really well in non-league, or when you've built a club up into the league and earned that autonomy. Yet this is the first time Dave Challinor has been appointed at a league club, and it's a goliath. The politics is more pronounced, you have to be really good at managing upwards, building relationships with the players and fans, bringing people into decision-making processes, and I would worry about Challinor in those areas. The authority that he rightly commanded at Stockport meant that, when he reportedly demonstrated certain combative, avoidant or unpredictable behaviours - which I'm not here to judge because I recognise managers have to have their way of getting a tune out of players in an intensely competitive environment - it may have been received as normal. Whereas, you put him in a dressing room with strong characters and big egos, in an environment where he's not a playing legend, he's not a promotion-winning manager at that club, and there's more of an onus on him having to prove himself - I think you'll see a lot more pushback. Did a terrific job at Stockport, I must say: two titles and constant top seven/six finishes is an excellent return, even with the resources. Yet based on the fit, I would be surprised if Challinor starts next season still in charge of Sheffield Wednesday.
— Gabriel Sutton (@GabSutton) November 1, 2026
Football is often interpreted as a ranking of objective capabilities of players and managers – if they’ve done x, they should be able to achieve y – when so much of it is actually about situational context.
The key is to have people around you who respond well to what you’re doing, and sometimes that can be more likely in one context than in another, depending on three main things: your leadership style, the personalities you’re around, and the power dynamics at the club.
From what I can gather, Challinor’s leadership style can be combative at times: he’s not afraid to tear into his players, such as in the drinks break at Wembley in the 4-1 play-off final defeat to Bolton.
There’s also reports emanating that he can be quite avoidant, as somebody intimated that Lewis Bate may have experienced, on The Yellowboard Stockport County Forum in May.
Others have suggested that his staff don’t quite know what version of him will walk into the building from one day to the next.
These suggestions may be unfounded, and are impossible to confirm without being in the room, but the noises are that Challinor can fall out with his players, and sometimes not necessarily make up with them.
It’s one thing to do that at this sort of level when you’re the guy who dropped down from League Two at the time to take the job, or you’re the guy who’s won two titles for the club and got them from the National League to the League One play-offs, and you’ve rightly earned the authority that means that kind of behavior might slip through the net.
I would like to clearly reiterate at this point, that I’m sure Dave would have his own private perspective on his management style, because there’s always another side to the conversations: this is merely how it seems to me, based on all the partial information that’s available.
With that partial information in mind, I think at Sheffield Wednesday it’ll be a bit different to how it was for him at Stockport.
24 of the Wednesday squad have played in the Championship, a level Challinor has never managed.
Not that the players will necessarily say it, but subconsciously I think some of them might find it difficult tolerating an abrasive leadership style from somebody who has never worked at the level they have. Not overtly, that is, but covertly.
The impact of being given an instruction by Challinor might not be quite the same as how an instruction from, for example, Paul Heckingbottom, who had been my choice for the job in the previous article, might be received.
I’m not saying that would be right, I’m saying none of us are perfect and sometimes that can be a natural, human impulse.
If you can imagine in your industry, you’ve worked at a certain level and are now getting told what to do by a senior who has never worked at that level, and then they demonstrate some confrontational or avoidant behavioral patterns, there’s going to be part of you that struggles with it – football is obviously different but I think that conveys the essence of my point.
This risk can be nullified if the person taking the job has fantastic people skills or is an amazing speaker, but I’m not sure Challinor does or is.
Alternatively, it could be nullified if they teach the players something new from a coaching perspective that they can really take forward into the rest of their careers, but I’m not sure Challinor possesses the coaching pedigree to have that sort of impact.
I really liked Challinor’s 3-5-2 Hartlepool team, with Sterry and Ferguson flying forward as wing-backs, Nicky Featherstone sitting and Holohan and Shelton pushing from midfield… but I wouldn’t say there was anything groundbreaking about them from a tactical or coaching perspective, they were just good at doing the simple things well.
I don’t know if simplicity translates to Championship players who may want super detailed training sessions, and a sense of learning something new every day.
Dave Challinor is the first managerial appointment for Arise, who completed their takeover of Sheffield Wednesday in May.
Once again, I appreciate what he achieved at Stockport across half-a-decade, but if you look at the Hatters last season, they were not the best to watch for large swathes and often relied on individual quality to attain 77 points.
Whereas, this season, they have a different profile of coach in Jimmy McNulty, and seem to have kicked on another level playing fantastic football.
That’s partly thanks to Challinor, and the foundations he laid that’s enabled McNulty to do what he’s now doing, but I don’t think Stockport fans are wishing they still had the former in charge – as deep as the appreciation is for everything he’s done for their club.
So, I think if you have loads of political currency, you can get away with not being as strong on the media and fan relations side, whereas when you don’t have as much of it, it can shine an unwanted light on some minor limitations – and that’s what I would worry about with Challinor.
That said, I do think the fact he’s working with Simon Wilson again is a positive, and clearly the Wednesday DoF liked him enough in their time together at Edgeley Park to rekindle that connection.
There’s also a fair possibility that Challinor’s combative management style will provide an initial short-term shot in the arm, after Henrik Pedersen, who I think is an excellent coach, but maybe didn’t quite have that extra bit of toughness in his locker to be the head honcho.
In the long run, however, I would worry that the same leadership and coaching style he demonstrated at Stockport might land the wrong way in a different context at Sheffield Wednesday, so I don’t see this being a lengthy relationship.
