Next Bristol City Manager Odds: Nine names in the frame to replace Nigel Pearson

After Nigel Pearson was dismissed at Bristol City, EFL expert Gab Sutton runs the rule over nine candidates to replace him in the Ashton Gate hot-seat.

1. Dean Smith

Since guiding Aston Villa to promotion, survival, and a respectable 11th-placed finish, via a historic 7-2 victory over Liverpool, things haven’t quite gone to plan for Dean Smith.

The Villans boss was sacked by his boyhood club in November 2021, and subsequently did little to arrest Norwich’s Premier League plight.

Smith left Carrow Road in January the following season, with the team three points off the Play-Offs but also three points above 16th, having looked largely unconvincing throughout – and he was unable to save Leicester from the drop with nine points from his eight games in charge.

As such, a lot of Smith’s good work at Villa, and previously at Brentford, has since been undone, and his reputation is about where it was when he was headhunted by the Bees from Walsall in 2015.

Verdict: For a manager who has struggled to coach teams defensively at higher levels, there hasn’t been enough of a clear style of play established by Smith in his more recent jobs, and there may be better candidates out there.

2. Gary Rowett

Rowett has proved himself a steady, consistent 7+/10 Championship manager, who has delivered results everywhere he’s been other than Stoke.

After laying the foundations for Burton’s League Two title win of 2014-15, with great form after back-to-back Play-Off finishes previously, the former defender led Birmingham to successive top 10 finishes – the first from a place of October crisis.

After one of the most infamous sackings of second tier history, Rowett then steered Derby to a Play-Off spot in his first full season, and led Millwall to eighth, 11th, ninth and eighth-placed finishes with a rock-solid defensive record: 65 clean sheets in 182 games (36%).

Verdict: Rowett would keep Bristol City well-drilled, and not losing many games, but he tends to only develop one or two talents in his teams at a time rather than three or four, and the big question is whether a perceived defensive style can win a promotion at this level.

3. John Eustace

Like Rowett in 2016, Eustace was controversially sacked by Birmingham at a stage when he was doing particularly well, in favour of a high-profile figure.

The 43-year-old’s work in B9 has unquestionably bolstered his reputation, because he’s proven he can coach a team well in adversity, as he did in 2022-23, when he inherited a wafer-thin squad and a club in a mess, structurally and financially.

Eustace has also proven that with the right resources, he can build a team capable of challenging at the top of the Championship, which Blues were when he left.

Verdict: A humble, steadying influence, someone who can establish a good relationship with players and rapport with fans, who has a plan and is proven, in the Championship, to improve players and teams with strong coaching. Has to be a top candidate.

4. Nathan Jones

Nathan Jones has delivered extraordinary success at Luton, breaking records with the Hatters in League Two in 2017-18’s promotion, before laying foundations for their League One title the following season.

Jones then kept Town up the year after, from a difficult position, and after a top half finish in 2020-21, he even steered them to the Play-Offs on a bottom-end budget.

The big question, however, is whether he can do it somewhere other than Kenilworth Road, given that between his two stints there, he struggled at Stoke, then was more recently part of Southampton’s relegation campaign.

That’s the gamble Bristol City would have to take, and it’s essential that Jones can present a more matured version of himself, as brazen comments and elaborate celebrations have, fairly or otherwise, created the perception of arrogance.

Verdict: Deserves an interview, but much depends on how much he’s grown over the last eight months.

5. Frank Lampard

The next couple of years will define whether Lampard truly has the drive to be a manager.

The Chelsea legend was fast-tracked into the Derby job, and did well to get them into the top six in 2018-19, although his side relied heavily on the individual quality of Harry Wilson and Mason Mount.

Nonetheless, vibrant cup performances added to his appeal to the Blues, and he delivered an admirable first season, getting them into the top four under a transfer embargo, without Eden Hazard, who’d left for Real Madrid.

After that, though, it all went downhill, and although Chelsea were top in December of the following season, they subsequently lost five in eight to drop to eighth, after spending £222m the previous summer on Hakim Ziyech, Edouard Mendy, Kai Havertz, Timo Werner, and Ben Chilwell. 

Lampard kept Everton up in 2021-22 after arriving in January, but left 12 months in with the team in the relegation zone, and the less said about his subsequent interim stint back at Chelsea, the better.

Verdict: There’s clearly some talent there – but he appears to enjoy a glamorous, affluent London lifestyle as well. Does the idea of being a manager appeal to him more than the reality of management?

6. Ryan Mason

Ryan Mason made no secret of his desire to become a manager on the High Performance Podcast, and his playing career-ending injury in 2017 has given him an early running jump.

15 months later, he joined the coaching staff at Tottenham, and after spells as Academy Coach, Head of Player Development (U17 to U23) and two as interim Head Coach, Mason is far better prepared than the average 32-year-old.

He’s highly rated by Ange Postecoglou, who brought him into the first-team coaching setup this season, and should be credited for Spurs’ unbeaten start with eight wins in their first 10 in the Premier League.

However, if Mason wants to be a number one, Bristol City could be a great opportunity for him.

Verdict: Mason could be brilliant – but does the work Bristol City have done over the last three years mean they don’t have to take a chance on a first-time manager? 

7. Jesse Marsch

Highly rated elsewhere for his work at Montreal Impact, New York Red Bulls, RB Leipzig (assistant) and RB Salzburg, where he won the Austrian Bundesliga twice, Marsch kept Leeds up in 2021-22, and the following season, they were 17th at the time and ended up getting relegated.

The fit at Elland Road wasn’t great, because while Marsch shared predecessor Marcelo Bielsa’s beliefs around pressing, his general philosophy was to operate narrowly and compress space, rather than play wide and expand it.

However, Bristol City have pressing monsters in Jason Knight, Anis Mehmeti, Andreas Weimann, Sam Bell, and Tommy Conway, and would probably suit Marsch’s style.

Verdict: Marsch clearly has outstanding people management skills, and when he has a squad that suits his methods, which Bristol City arguably do, he can achieve something special.

8. Michael Beale

Steven Gerrard once said it’d take him 20 years to become as good a tracksuit coach as Michael Beale, with whom he worked at Rangers, delivering the Scottish Premiership title, and Aston Villa.

After a travelled and illustrious coaching career, Beale began life as a number one at QPR and had them top of the Championship in October 2022, but that period was rife with murmurings he might move, and a month later he took the Rangers job.

The 43-year-old did the job at Ibrox that was expected of him last season, but was sacked early in this campaign after three defeats in the first seven, but his ability is obvious.

Verdict: Beale is ambitious, and if a bigger opportunity comes along he’ll want it, but this is a rare opportunity for Bristol City to get a top-rated coach when they’re out of work, as opposed to having to poach them from another job.

9. Luke Williams

If Bristol City want a progressive, process-driven coach, they could do worse than Luke Williams.

The Cider Army may remember, from their 2014-15 double-winning season under Steve Cotterill, an enterprising, free-flowing Swindon side who beat them at the County Ground that year, en route to reaching the Play-Off Final – Williams had been the coaching brains behind that operation.

Initially, it didn’t work out for him as a number one, but after doing some great work assisting Russ Martin at MK Dons and Swansea, Notts County took another chance on Williams, and he rewarded them with a 107-point season, and victory in the Play-Offs.

Williams is highly innovative, and loves to convert wingers and attacking midfielders into wing-back positions, while favouring a 3-4-2-1 system featuring a box midfield of two number sixes and two tens.

However, he benefited from the work done by Ian Burchnall the year before to establish the playing style, even if not as effectively.

If he’d followed John Sheridan or Kevin Nolan, for example, he’d have had to have done more foundational work and therefore not been able to more extreme version of his methodology.

Verdict: The Bristol City job would be harder for Williams, because while they’re not exactly a long ball team, they’re not a possession side either, so he’d have to show that he can manage the transition in a way we’ve not seen from him before. It would be a big risk, and would mean sacrificing a Play-Off challenge this season to invest time towards building an identity, that might not come to fruition until 2025-26 – and that’s if they do everything right.