Deehan appointed as Director of Football
By Nathan Jackson
June 15 2006
John Deehan has finally ended the speculation of who will be the Imps' next manager after joining as Director of Football. Deehan will be helping out new head coach, John Schofield and for the first time in a long time, the Imps' finally seem able to be optimistic about the future.
The announcement came in the early hours of the morning when a lot of Imps’ fans were on the way to work that John Deehan had joined the club but not in the manager’s position that most had expected. However, the former Wigan manager joins the club in a director of football role and John Schofield is promoted yet again as he becomes head coach and will be mainly in charge of first team affairs. This move came as a surprise to most Imps’ fans but after a Q&A session with the fans on Thursday afternoon, optimism was all around the room after the pair talked about their plans for next season. Deehan, who still has a deal with the Republic of Ireland national team and only flew into England less than 5 hours before the Q&A session from Germany. He revealed that there are a lot of young Irish players at the top clubs that show tremendous talent and the Imps might try and take some on loan if the situation calls for it during the season. More encouragingly, unlike Keith Alexander, Deehan and Schofield’s plans aren’t to bring in as many players as possible and then never used them. The plan is, if the situation requires it, to access potential players over an extended amount of time and then make a move for that player if it benefit’s the club. On the playing side of things, the two John’s revealed that they would be doing everything to win the games and try and play some decent football at the same time but still use the long ball if unavoidable. This will come as welcome news to Imps’ fans after 4 years of pumping the ball into the air as much as possible but for the first time this summer, Imps’ fans can dare to dream about next season and hopefully this will turn out to be our final season in this division for a long time.