Yahoo News Chris Cohen to Stoke City: from headhunted by Nathan Jones to joining evolution at Clayton Wood
Nathan Jones would admit himself that he was either the wrong man at the wrong time or the right man at the wrong time at Stoke City. But, either way, he has always insisted he learned a hell of a lot from his 10 months in the Potteries. It wasn’t the case that he just went back into Luton Town and picked up where he left off, taking the club to the cusp of the Premier League.
Between leaving Stoke in October 2019 and returning to Kenilworth Road in May 2020 he had a period of reflection and research – and that would ultimately lead him to a reunion with his old Yeovil Town teammate, roommate and protégé Chris Cohen, who – four years on – has now joined Stoke as assistant head coach.
Back then, Cohen was coaching the under-23s at Nottingham Forest, where he spent a decade as a player after joining from Yeovil before hanging up his boots due to injury – and he was headhunted to be part of a tweaked Jones model.
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“Chris is someone I’ve known for a long time,” Jones said at the time. “I played with him and we were very close friends, but I followed his career closely. Then when I left my previous employment (at Stoke), I was looking to freshen my staff up in certain areas and I did a lot of research on up and coming coaches, people who would really fit in with me. Chris was one of those.”
Jones and Cohen guided Luton to a comfortable mid-table finish in their first season together then shocked pundits by breaking into the play-off places in their second, ending with Cohen replacing long-serving Mick Harford as assistant manager.
That summer Cohen graduated with his Uefa Pro Licence, part of which meant undertaking and delivering a project to fellow students like a university dissertation. Cohen’s was the snappily-titled ‘How the adult brain behaves: Coaching individuals and teams to achieve optimum performance’. It sounds scientific but it fits into his coaching mindset and making players better whether they are in the under-23s or heading towards the other end of their career.
“I still think development is very much possible at first team level no matter how old you are,” Cohen told the Luton News. “I’m a massive advocate of 29, 30-year-olds being able to get better, as I felt like, even though I had a lot of injuries, I got better as I got older in terms of understanding the game and the decisions that I made.
“So you can still get better, but inevitably you have to gets results on a Saturday, that’s the difference to youth football where you have time and you have a year, year and a half with each individual to help them grow and help them get better.
“A bad performance doesn’t matter when we used to play our games, now we have to be at it and we have to be right every Saturday. So getting that balance means the workload’s gone up, but I still think there’s a huge place for development, but it’s not at the expense of results.
“In youth football it's different, development at the expense of results is absolutely fine but it’s about trying to get three points every Saturday and Tuesday night which has been great for me as it’s the bit you miss after you stop playing football.”
It was results that got Jones – and with him, Cohen and fellow coach Alan Sheehan, the former Notts County and Luton left-back who is now assistant manager at Swansea – a chance at Southampton in the Premier League. It was to prove a tough experience.
"I learned as much in those months about football as I had in the 20 years prior. I've been really fortunate that I've been really successful at Luton. We had the us against the world mentality, overachieving and creating an amazing environment. At Southampton maybe it was a bit different," Cohen said when he later joined the Garibaldi Red podcast as a guest.
"They were used to the Premier League and had everything. They had lots of staff, they had everything you could ever want. Ultimately it was an unsuccessful time that made me realise even more what we created at Luton and realise that it's not just the playing side, but the way the club was run and the people that worked there. Knowing we can create that anywhere is important.
"Knowing you don't need 60 or 70 staff - and they weren't bad staff, we met lots of nice people who were good at what they do, but the volume of people made it tough for us to find anyone that was accountable. We want people with us willing to put their head above the parapet and say 'I think we should do this' and not afraid to be wrong.
"It was quite easy to stay out the way with so many people. With that many people, there were times when me, Nathan and Alan felt very alone, which I know is ironic given there was maybe 100 staff at the training ground compared to about 15 at Luton where we felt the most welcomed people in the world.
“I've got no regrets at all. Graham Potter is the only manager I can think of who got a shot at the Premier League from a Championship club. Most times you need a promotion, to take a team up to get that chance. Ultimately, I don't want it to sound like I'm blaming others because we didn't win games of football. I know we were capable of doing that because we'd done it for two and a half years at Luton. We weren't able to implement our style well enough to win games, or moments in games.
“Ultimately the responsibility was ours. There were lots of surprises. The scrutiny of the Premier League from the press blew us away, but if we win games the players should get the credit and if we lose, then the staff take the repercussions. That's how it panned out."
That podcast, with our old friend Matt Davies who used to pop up in this parish, is a good listen if you have a spare half hour.
Jones took his time before going back into football in League One with Charlton. Cohen headed for the third tier too after getting a call to assist interim manager Tom Shaw at Lincoln last November. He then stayed to work alongside new head coach Michael Skubala and a side that was 12th on New Year’s Day having won eight and lost 10 (29 goals for, 29 against) of their opening 26 games went on to pick up more points than everyone bar top two Derby and Portsmouth in the final four months. Twenty games, 12 wins, two defeats, 36 goals for and 11 against. Derby and Portsmouth only picked up more points before they played more games.
The development of players including centre-back Sean Rouglan and midfielder Ethan Erhahon has been noted, as well as Stoke youth graduate Lasse Sorensen. Scouts are watching.
But clubs were watching the coaches too and it’s Stoke who have come calling for Cohen, a Steven Schumacher-backed club appointment. He joins a first team set-up including assistant Mark Hughes and coach Peter Cavanagh. It will be interesting to see what happens with Alex Morris, another club appointment who stepped across from the under-21s to focus on the seniors in the spring and is very highly rated.
This summer has not been the kind of overhaul that happened last year but just a couple of new faces could make a big difference. Jon Walters, as sporting director, is subtly putting a new stamp on things at Clayton Wood.
