Hull City’s plans for the new season have been thrown into further disarray with the news that their approach for Wales manager Chris Coleman has been turned down by the Football Association of Wales.
After the departure of Steve Bruce just under a fortnight ago, promoted Hull face the prospect of going into their opening day encounter against defending champions Leicester without a recognised manager to take charge.
It seems to be the latest in a long line of setbacks for Hull, losing your manager just a month before the Premier League season starts is never ideal but once you add that to the fact that there are only 13 fit senior players at present and whoever does take over is certainly going to have their work cut out.
Could that man be Chris Coleman, well not if the FAW have anything to do with it. Coleman’s stock has most certainly risen thanks to Wales reaching the Semi Finals of Euro 2016 and although he has signed a contract to lead them into the 2018 World Cup qualifying campaign he will still be on a number clubs radars not just now but throughout the season if and when other vacancies come around.
Coleman himself has gone on record and said that he will look to get back into club management once this contract has ended but he has also stated that he would like to work abroad, so for Hull it looks like being the wrong time and the wrong place.
Although Hull are a Premier League club, with all the issues that are going on around them at the moment unless you are a manager out of work looking to get back in then it’s probably not the most attractive proposition. Perhaps Coleman will bide his time and wait to see if there are any better offers.
With stock so high and with almost the freedom of Wales he has the luxury to pick and choose any offers that may come around over the course of the season, of which they will be many due to the nature of the sack race these days. So Wales fans can breathe a sigh of relief for now but they better get used to story’s like this being somewhat of a recurring theme.
I think Coleman also knows that his value has risen considerably since the European Championships and he is now great rush to leave Wales but at the same time he may feel that he has already taken them as far as they can go and qualification for the World Cup in Russia is now a minimum.
The question is has Coleman got the appetite for it, at present you would say of course but it only needs the campaign to get off to a bad start and all off a sudden the escape route of club football becomes a lot more prominent for the former Fulham and Coventry manager.
For Hull though it’s back to the drawing board. If they can’t even get to talk to the current Wales boss then they are going to have a difficult time of trying to sell him the idea of managing the club. Do they now fall back on someone like Roberto Martinez who has Premier League experience as manager of Wigan and Everton or do they go done the someone untried route of former USA coach Bob Bradley. Whatever decision they make they need to make one soon.