Wolves manager Gary O’Neil reportedly impressed a lot of people within Sky Sports with his recent appearance on Monday Night Football.
The 40-year-old was a special guest on the programme last month, which was airing Tottenham Hotspur vs Fulham, and gave a fascinating insight into his tactics and gameplans against Bournemouth and Manchester City.
Every so often Premier League managers past and present go on MNF and it usually makes for interesting viewing.
But the appearance by O’Neil seriously impressed people on social media, and reporter Johnny Phillips, who supports Wolves, has suggested it wasn’t just people online who were really taken by him…
Johnny Phillips claims many at Sky Sports loved Gary O’Neil’s Monday Night Football appearance
Phills has appeared on the latest Wolves Weekly podcast to talk about O’Neil’s recent appearance on one of Sky’s most popular shows.
Most Wolves fans know that O’Neil has always spoken well in post-match interviews and press conferences, but this was the first time for a lot of neutrals to see what he was all about.
His brilliant mind and articulation won him a lot of new fans, and Phillips – who works for Sky himself – says his performance on the programme went down really well behind the scenes.
He said: “He wasn’t trying to be a smart alec or anything like that, he was just trying to decode it for us really. I thought it was a fantastic explanation which impressed a lot of people at Sky – I know that for a fact. It went down very well in our company. Hopefully it did so to the wider supporter base.”
Despite a really solid and confident appearance, O’Neil actually admitted that it is not something he finds ‘overly easy’.
O’Neil getting the plaudits he deserves after MNF showing
It was extremely refreshing to see O’Neil talking in such detail about his tactical ideas and how he was able to mastermind such brilliant results for Wolves.
Hopefully he did not give too much away, but you get the feeling that O’Neil is too innovative for that to be a worry going forward.
It was also very nice to see so many neutrals praising O’Neil for his intelligence and just being so open, as it’s something he very much deserves.
There was a real low for him earlier this year when he got sacked by Bournemouth, a decision pundit Chris Sutton called ‘very harsh’. It’s great to see him bounce back from that at Wolves, with many now acknowledging him as a really promising young English coach.