Gary Lineker has now made a very interesting claim about what he believes Gary O’Neil could achieve in football management.
The whole of the Premier League have cast their eyes on the job Gary O’Neil has done at Wolves this season.
After taking over from Julen Lopetegui, who walked out on the Wanderers three days before the Premier League season started, O’Neil was given zero chance of becoming a success at Molineux.
The club was ravaged by FFP issues, had sold their best players and spent hardly anything on improving their squad in the transfer window.
Fast forward six months and O’Neil has significantly improved the fortunes of several players, built up a wonderful connection with supporters, launched a challenge on Europe and reached the FA Cup quarter-finals.
It’s such achievements – given the circumstances that he arrived in – that should put him in contention to win the Manager of the Season award and now Gary Lineker has made an interesting prediction on what he thinks the Wolves boss could achieve in management.
Gary Lineker tips Gary O’Neil to become ‘special’ English coach
During the history of the Premier League, no English manager has ever got their hands on the title.
In a competition that has been dominated by the likes of Sir Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger, Pep Guardiola, Jurgen Klopp and Jose Mourinho, a world-class coach has never emerged from English shores, at least in the 21st century.
Speaking on the Rest Is Football podcast, Lineker has tipped O’Neil to become that ‘special’ coach who can perhaps go on to win the Premier League title one day.
“I mean, you know what it’s like with coaching and managers, you start eulogising about someone and then they lose four games on the trot and then they’re out their job,” Lineker said.
“So you always need to be a little bit wary but when you listen to him, you know what he’s talking about. You can see the players have bought into what he does, he plays aggressive, attacking, pressing football, maybe we’ve struggled to find great England coaches and we can see that in Premier League history, there’s not been an English coach who has won one yet.
“So maybe he’ll be that special coach, I don’t want to build him up too much because of what we said before but you never know.”
O’Neil can go to the very top
From the way he conducts himself in interviews to how he mastermind wins over the likes of Manchester City and Tottenham, O’Neil is looking every bit of a world-class coach.
He’s taken on a very difficult job at Wolves and somehow got them challenging for Europe which was unthinkable at the start of the season.
Not only that but reaching the FA Cup quarter-finals is just a testament to how much of a special coach he is with Tim Sherwood even saying previously that no one else could have got the Wanderers to where they are today.
If O’Neil continues on this current trajectory, he will surely land a top job in football management and perhaps fulfil Lineker’s prediction in the process.