October 2022, the Mercure Hotel at Sheffield Parkway. Hull City are in need of a new head coach to lead their survival fight in the Championship and the search to find Shota Arveladze’s replacement has narrowed.
Consideration has gone to Rob Edwards and others based overseas but it is Liam Rosenior, a young manager without a track record of note, who has piqued interest.
A 60-page document has been submitted to Hull’s recruitment team that includes annotated footage and stills. It is Rosenior outlining the side’s problems and what he considers to be the tactical solutions in forensic detail. A philosophy laid bare.
Phone calls follow before the meeting in South Yorkshire. A 20-minute PowerPoint presentation concludes with Hull officials unanimously sold on handing Rosenior his first permanent managerial position.
“I would always ask players and coaches where they saw themselves in five years,” Tan Kesler, then Hull’s vice-chairman and now the chief executive of Polish club Pogon Szczecin, tells The Athletic. “Liam’s answer was that he wanted to be leading a club that’s playing in the Champions League. Not just the Premier League, the Champions League.”
Rosenior, it turns out, has managed that feat inside four years. The 41-year-old has departed Strasbourg to fill the void left by Enzo Maresca, whose exit from Stamford Bridge was confirmed on New Year’s Day. To write this profile, The Athletic has spoken to people who know or have worked with Rosenior. They have asked to remain anonymous to protect relationships. Unless otherwise stated, information found within this article has been gathered from those conversations.
Rosenior is tasked with reviving Chelsea’s season in an opening month that will include a Carabao Cup semi-final against Arsenal and more London derbies against Brentford, Crystal Palace and West Ham United. It represents an enormous challenge for a figure with so little experience. There will be plenty holding doubts — but not Rosenior.
“Liam was waiting for this moment,” adds Kesler. “He’s been spending years preparing for this. When we hired him, he had a light. He was different.”
It is a short road that has led Rosenior to Chelsea, beginning with an interim spell in League One as Derby County head coach in 2022, before time in charge of Hull and Strasbourg, but those close to him have always known the draw of management.
His father, Leroy, says Rosenior targeted becoming a manager before he ever wanted to be a player. He read the FA Coaching Book of Soccer Tactics and Skills as a nine-year-old, as he wrote in the Coaches’ Voice, and took charge of his school football team in Bristol at 11.
An accomplished career as a defender spanning 16 years took Rosenior all the way to the Premier League, but by the time he was featuring in the 2014 FA Cup final with Hull, losing in extra time to Arsenal, the first steps into coaching had already been made.
Rosenior, then in his late twenties, put himself forward to work with Hull’s academy staff, attending under-21s games and watching from the dugout. He would even play an active role in dressing-room discussions, all as he qualified for the first of his coaching badges through Northern Ireland’s Football Association alongside team-mate Tom Huddlestone. A Pro Licence, the highest coaching level, was attained at 32 as he saw out his playing days with Brighton & Hove Albion.
“Liam would be the one reading Pep Guardiola’s book or Jose Mourinho’s, reading anything he could on coaching,” says Curtis Davies, who played alongside Rosenior at Hull before then being coached by his one-time team-mate at Derby County.
“I wouldn’t call him opinionated because he wouldn’t be standing in front of the manager and telling him what to do, but in conversations, he was always saying we might try this or that. He was always thinking about the game.”
Little has changed. Rosenior spent his 18 months as Strasbourg manager living within a mile of the Stade de la Meinau and the club’s adjacent training ground, with assistant Kalifa Cisse as his housemate.
Justin Walker and Ben Warner, his two most trusted allies since becoming a coach at Derby, were picked as neighbours and the quartet would typically spend evenings planning training sessions and scouting opponents. Rosenior went all-in when in Alsace, leaving his family at home in Derbyshire.
Coaching, Rosenior would say, has long been his calling. There was a brief spell working as a pundit with Sky Sports after retiring in 2018, duties he juggled when coaching in Brighton’s youth ranks, but that media position inadvertently set him on this journey towards Chelsea.
Derby’s then-owner, Mel Morris, had enjoyed Rosenior’s insight on TV and subsequently invited him to join Phillip Cocu’s coaching staff in the summer of 2019. It did not work out for Cocu as Derby’s financial problems began to bite, but Rosenior went on to assist Wayne Rooney, who had stepped up as player-manager in the Championship.
Liam Rosenior and Wayne Rooney during their time together at Derby County (Richard Sellers/PA Images via Getty Images)
“Liam is as good a coach as I’ve worked with,” said Rooney on his BBC podcast, the Wayne Rooney Show, this week. “Liam was incredible with his coaching ability.”
“Under Cocu, he would do odd bits but it was the Dutch gang and him,” remembers Davies. “There was one game where we were losing and he nodded for his staff to come and have a chat in the huddle. He started speaking in Dutch and I could see Liam’s face, almost wondering what the point of it was.
“That summed up his role and he got pretty frustrated but once Cocu was gone, there was an opportunity for him. The next season, when we had the points deduction, you saw Liam for how good he was. We were building a team and an identity and Liam ran away with it. We played some unbelievable football. He was meticulous. It was detail, detail. I’m sure Liam and Wayne worked very closely together but the implementation of those ideas was 90 per cent done by Liam.”
During that 2021-22 season, Derby collected 55 points in the Championship under Rooney and Rosenior, but 21 points were deducted for entering administration and breaking the English Football League’s accounting rules, ensuring there was no escape from relegation to League One. It was in the third tier that Rosenior was given the responsibility of leading Derby on a short-term basis following Rooney’s exit.
“Liam had to try to bring a squad together to compete in League One and he was hard done by in not getting the job permanently,” says Davies. “He was in talks for the role but Paul Warne was on the radar. Because of his experience in the league, they jumped in. Liam deserved the opportunity to take that club on after all the work he had put in.”
One door closing on Rosenior, though, would soon lead to a familiar one opening. After five years as a player with Hull, the club his grandmother had actively supported, he returned as manager in the autumn of 2022.
A first season soon dismissed any threat of relegation with a final position of 15th before a second ended with Hull in seventh. That remains the club’s highest standing since being relegated from the Premier League in 2016-17. Throughout, he was hands-on, a coach who led most sessions. A small squad, enabling greater time for individual coaching, was Rosenior’s preference.
“Some coaches have amazing strategies and tactics but they might struggle to communicate the message,” says Kesler. “One of Liam’s great strengths is that ability to simplify things for his players, allowing them to apply it at the highest level.
“He and his staff would spend time on individual improvements but he’s very task-oriented. He won’t spend hours in meetings. He’s very specific, with short meetings to the point. Then they go back on the pitch to create moments for players to showcase their talent.
“They build confidence and then the players come back and ask for more from him. If you’re a younger player, then he’s an opportunity because he doesn’t just constructively criticise you as a coach, he puts you in a position to do what he asks of you in your own creative way. He doesn’t tell you exactly how to do it, he gives you the track for you to speed.”
One of Chelsea’s leading attackers can attest to that. Liam Delap, who had worked with Walker in Derby’s academy, was loaned from Manchester City by Hull in the summer of 2023 and scored eight goals in 31 Championship appearances, reviving a young career that had failed to ignite during temporary spells at Stoke City and Preston North End. Ipswich Town saw enough in Delap’s time with Hull to spend £20million ($27m) to sign him the next season.
“Liam Delap is a good example,” says Kesler. “He came to us and his confidence was shattered. He was doubting his ability but we knew he had the quality. Liam and his staff worked with him one-on-one in meetings to educate him. Liam is a good educator and he’s patient.”
There are recurring themes in appraisals of Rosenior and prominent among them is his work developing young players. As well as Delap, Jaden Philogene (back to Aston Villa) and Jacob Greaves (to Ipswich Town) won Premier League moves after their one full season with Rosenior, while Liverpool’s Fabio Carvalho returned from his Hull loan to join Brentford in a £27.5m move.
Rosenior’s popularity with younger players was clear and had been noted by Strasbourg’s owners, BlueCo.
“He’s approachable and, as a human being, he’s a good person,” says Davies. “That matters because when you compare the time that me and Liam were coming through as players, it’s very different now.
“The way you deal with young players now is to get down on a ground level and speak about the game, the tactics and clips. Liam’s personality leans towards that. Liam has still got that rocket in him but when he goes to ‘volume 10’, it comes across well. You know he means business when he gets to that. It’s a good balance.”
Rosenior has shown other skills as a manager, too. There has been diplomacy when stuck in the middle of fans protesting against Strasbourg’s place in a multi-club ownership structure and a long-standing willingness to tackle racism.
In the days that followed a nomination as the Championship’s manager of the year in April 2024, he was subjected to vile online abuse. “When people are saying it’s a token gesture and things like ‘monkey’ are being written, I have to say something in public,” Rosenior, whose father Leroy was awarded an MBE for tackling discrimination in sport, told BBC Radio Humberside. “It’s water off a duck’s back, but it hurts when my kids are bringing it to me.”
Rosenior held up a banner that read “say no to racism” when winning the following Championship game away to Cardiff City.
Rosenior will make his Chelsea bow in Saturday’s FA Cup third-round tie against Charlton Athletic — and that will be his first game in English football since taking charge of Hull’s 1-0 loss at Plymouth Argyle in May 2024. That final-day defeat snuffed out any hope of finishing in the Championship’s top six and led Acun Ilicali, Hull’s Turkish owner, to fire his head coach, believing their visions were “not aligned”.
Rosenior was not short of interest before the 2024-25 campaign. There were talks with Sunderland owner Kyril Louis-Dreyfus before Rosenior exited the process, and with Burnley, who opted to appoint Scott Parker.
Instead, it was an offer from figures he knew well that Rosenior grasped.
Chelsea’s co-sporting director, Laurence Stewart, had been Hull’s head of performance analysis when Rosenior joined as a player in 2010, a position he held until leaving for Manchester City in a similar capacity four years later. Rosenior and Stewart were close throughout, spending hours in the director’s analysis room at the club’s training ground.
Paul Winstanley, Chelsea’s other sporting director, had also seen Rosenior’s early coaching work first-hand when head of scouting at Brighton & Hove Albion, along with Sam Jewell, now Chelsea’s director of global recruitment. Strasbourg, owned by Chelsea’s parent company BlueCo, saw Rosenior as a natural fit, capable of developing the youngest squad in Europe’s top five divisions.
And it worked out. Despite back-to-back defeats at the end of the season costing Strasbourg a place in the Champions League, qualification for the Conference League rewarded a campaign that included a 2-1 win at home to Paris Saint-Germain and a 1-1 draw at Marseille, which was attended by Chelsea co-owner Behdad Eghbali.
“There was a meticulous element in his preparation and how he wanted to play,” says Lee Darnbrough, Hull’s former head of recruitment. “He had a way of building up through the phases rather than going direct to the front. There was an insistence on playing from the back to invite teams on.”
And a tactical flexibility.
“There was a game when we played Sunderland away and we didn’t have any fit centre-forwards, so he played with two ‘No 10s’ (attacking midfielders) and two wingers, but his wingers stayed as strikers out wide,” adds Darnbrough. “That game ended 4-4. He found a solution within the squad and it caused the opposition a problem.”
Part of last season’s successful Strasbourg team was Chelsea’s Brazilian midfielder Andrey Santos, who gave a glowing assessment of Rosenior when speaking at a press conference in November. “He’s amazing,” said the former Strasbourg loanee, as reported by the BBC. “I improved a lot with him. Our relationship is perfect.”
Liam Rosenior and Chelsea’s Andrey Santos enjoyed an excellent relationship at Strasbourg (Sebastien Bozon/AFP via Getty Images)
Centre-back Mamadou Sarr and attacker Emmanuel Emegha are also set to be Chelsea players next season after 18 months working with Rosenior at Strasbourg, with a pathway between the two clubs — uncomfortably for some — all too apparent.
“He needs support and an environment to build a relationship with the players but when he builds it’s very tight,” says Kesler. “In Chelsea’s situation, Paul is there, Laurence is there, they all know him and have worked with him. He will have this support mechanism around him so it will help him to become successful.”
Rosenior’s inexperience, though, inevitably adds risk to this next step. The scrutiny faced when in charge of Derby, Hull and Strasbourg will markedly intensify at Chelsea, as will the expectations on the back of Maresca’s reign, which included the Club World Cup and Conference League titles last season.
Rosenior is yet to win a major honour, either as player or manager, but makes no secret of his ambitions. In an interview with The Athletic last season, his stated aim was to become England manager. “The longer I’ve worked (as a coach), the more I believe I can get there.”
And here he is at the highest level. Chelsea manager.
“It’s a great opportunity that he’d be silly to turn down,” says Davies, who played in Rosenior’s first game as a manager three and a half years ago. “He’s been striving for this since he was 30 years old and I’m sure he’ll give it all he can. Chelsea are now hiring coaches to play to a style and develop young players and I fully believe Liam can do that.”