No manager, no problem - English club prepare for radical experiment

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FT Desk

National League side Forest Green are making history as they have decided to see how the team performs without a manager in place.

Following previous manager Robbie Savage's departure for Peterborough, Forest Green Rovers owner Dale Vince has revealed the club will move forward without a head coach to "see what happens".

Since Savage left in September, the club have been led by three coaches: Josh Bowen, Yan Klukowski and Jonathan Gould.

Vince insists there is "no vacancy" at the club currently and that they wanted to experiment without a "big ego" manager in place at The New Lawn Stadium.

“We’re in a situation where we’re not in a hurry,” he told BBC Radio Gloucestershire.

“We’re not actually having any conversations. We haven’t spoken to anybody about the role. We like where we are, we’re going to see how it goes — maybe for a few games, maybe for a month.

“The coaching team have been doing the heavy lifting anyway; they know the team inside out. I think the three of them make very balanced, rational decisions.

“We aren’t talking to anybody. I promise you we haven’t had a single conversation. All of the speculation within the media is just speculation. Nobody is in the frame, nobody is connected to the job. At the moment, there is no vacancy.”

Under Vince's stewardship, Forest Green became the world's first vegan football club in 2015, and the New Lawn was installed with numerous eco-friendly innovations.

On the pitch, things haven't been rosy, as they dropped out of the Football League two years ago after suffering successive relegations in 2022-23 and 2023-24. They finished seventh in the National League last season but failed to get promoted via the playoffs.

Vince is hoping this new experiment can prove to be a successful one.

“I don’t feel an urgency,” he confessed.

“If you look at how we played last Tuesday (the 1-1 draw with Wealdstone), we played really well, we could have nicked it.

“There’s no drama. Without Robbie, I think we’re fine without a manager.

“The thing I see in football is teams are led by big-ego managers and I’m not sure that they always make the best decisions. We’re going to try something different to see if we can get a more balanced outcome, decision-making-wise. We’re going to run without the big-ego manager for a little while and see what happens.

“We’ve got a team of coaches that, between them, have an awful lot of experience — Premier League, Championship. We think between them they’ve probably got it. But also they know the players and the club inside out.

“I think we won’t miss the manager, but let’s see. We’re just focused on being the best we can be. With this change imposed upon us, we’re trying to see if we can make something quite good out of it.”