After weeks of speculation, Gillingham appointed Stephen Clemence as their new Head Coach on Wednesday.
It’s a bold and exciting move by the League Two club. The early season pace-setters (topping the league after four consecutive 1-0 wins), the Gills’ form has dipped in recent weeks. Despite a long recruitment process over the last four weeks which has seen the side drop several points, the Kent club are still within touching distance of the play-off places.
So, no pressure then on the 45-year-old Clemence who enters his first managerial position following 13 years of coaching across the Premier League and Championship.
Despite this being his first time in the hot seat, Clemence has certainly earned his move thanks to an impressive coaching career which has seen him excel as assistant coach under Steve Bruce at Sunderland, Hull City, Aston Villa, Sheffield Wednesday, Newcastle United and West Bromwich Albion. Achieving promotion to the Premier League with the Tigers in 2016 and helping Aston Villa reach the Championship play-off final in 2018, Clemence went onto coach 200 games in the Premier League with Newcastle.
In total, he has coached more than 400 games in the top two tiers of English football – a striking statistic that would have no doubt impressed Galinson during the club’s extensive recruitment search. The sacking of former manager Neil Harris four weeks ago certainly raised a few eyebrows among EFL fans, especially given the fact that Gillingham boasted the second best form over 2023 (not long into the new era when the club’s owners Brad and Shannon Galinson took over, with 10 January signings helping propel the side up the table).
The main reason for Harris’ sudden sacking was a desire for a change of playing style. For years, the Gills have favoured a direct, defensive style, driven by a never-say-die attitude and getting the ball up to the forward line at every opportunity . Not always pretty on the eye but effective in periods.The last time the club focused more on a fast-paced high press, possession based style was during the late Justin Edinburgh’s tenure, which saw the club just miss out on the League One play-offs during the 2015-2016 season.
Since the new owners took over, the club has seen attendances increase at Priestfield Stadium by over 1,500. With significant improvements already made in their short tenure (including high-profile signings such as Scott Malone and Connor Mahoney, the launch of a B-team to help develop more home-grown players and ground improvements including new LED advertising boards around the ground to help drive more club revenue), works are ongoing to launch a new club shop and an overall improved matchday experience from catering (utilising local suppliers) to a new fanzone area in the stadium’s legendary Rainham End stand.
The new owners want to see a more entertaining brand of football to help carry on the new-found wave of positivity that’s been unleashed this year: it was the main reason for Harris’s departure which Galinson indicated during an insightful interview to Kent Online earlier this week:
“We have stayed close, there is utter respect for him, but we wanted to play a different kind of football, mainly because of the position we are in now and even the budget we have”.
The initial wave of new-found optimism from fans has been severely tested in recent weeks. Some poor results (including a heavy 4-1 away defeat at mid-table Walsall) has been coupled with poor PR too. A car crash involving several first-team players several weeks into the season thankfully left no one hurt, while there have been a number of incidences of crowd trouble in recent home games.
This included a racism incident last weekend after Newport’s Omar Bogle opened the scoring in the Welsh side’s 2-0 win. The club’s communication was quick and direct, banning the guilty fan for life that evening and trying to rally the true fans together to ensure the good feelings built by the new owners this year are not going to go up in smoke.
Improving communication has been one of the key improvements installed by the new owners. Brad and Shannon regularly use X (formerly Twitter) to update fans on the latest news, from the search for a new manager, to a new women’s team. Meanwhile the club has appointed Bloc Pictures to help improve the quality and regularity of the video content published on the team’s digital and social channels.
Valuing local fan-produced content on social media platforms has also seen improved trust and new relationships formed between staff and fans to help build a one-club approach. Open communication was also one of Galinson’s four key requirements for the new manager, referenced in the recent Kent Online interview:
“We wanted to make sure the culture and the personality of the manager fits very specifically with what we are trying to build at Priestfield; transparency, collaboration, communication, very open, very group setting, one club and one vision, and we happily and transparently work together.
As well as honesty and personality, someone that can smile and joke and realise this is the best job in the world, that in the end we want to win but we want to have fun doing it. We wanted to make sure the personality and the culture of the manager really fits the kind of people we have.”
Clemence will surely excel in this regard. His interview on the club’s website was confident and enthusiastic, impressively highlighting his knowledge of the side while prioritising the need to get the goal-shy team to start hitting the back on the net more regularly (Gills, despite sitting 9th, are the lowest scores in the league).
Furthermore, Clemence has proven experience as a great man-manger. Jack Grealish (during his time with Clemence at Aston Villa) praised him as the best assistant manager he ever had, helping him to become the star that he is today for Manchester City and England. He also spent time this summer working with City’s youth team.
The former Birmingham City player’s interview on the club’s website highlighted his desire to use his man-management skills to help build a happy and successful dressing room:
“I’m very hands on – I want to be involved. I like to try and improve people – both on the grass and off the pitch as well. There’s behaviours that I like as a player and the one thing I did as a player was give 110%. I took that into my coaching career and I will now take that into my Head Coaching career and I demand that from my players”.
There’s no doubt Clemence is a risk from a club who have appointed experienced managers in recent times in Steve Evans and Neil Harris. But with risk comes reward. The club’s new infrastructure (with Director of Football Kenny Jackett and Director of Recruitment Andy Hessenthaler in place) is made for a skilled Head Coach appointment to focus on helping improve players, embed an entertaining playing style and help the clubs attacking players including Jonny Williams, Tom Nichols and George Lapslie to start having greater impact.
With a number of young players earning rave reviews this season (including Shad Ogie, Ethan Coleman and Dominic Jefferies), there is no doubting a bright future is being built at the club. It’s now down to Clemence (along with new assistant manager Robbie Stockdale) to help take the club forward and help awake the sleeping giant.
