Category: Championship League

• Frenchman coached Rennes and Strasbourg in Ligue 1

• QPR say he has a record of creating ‘world-class talent’

Queens Park Rangers have appointed the Frenchman Julien Stéphan as their head coach. The 44-year-old’s arrival comes a day after Martí Cifuentes officially left, having been placed on gardening leave after the penultimate game of the Championship season. Stéphan has worked in Ligue 1 in two spells with his boyhood club, Rennes, with whom he won the Coupe de France in 2019, and one with Strasbourg.

“I feel very proud and excited to join QPR,” Stéphan told the club’s website. “QPR is a historic club with strong values and passionate fans, so I feel honoured. I wanted to come here because I know there’s a lot of passion around the club and around the team, and I feel very lucky to discover that.

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• Boro fill role left by sacking of Carrick earlier in June

• ‘It’s something that’s not lost on me, how big this is’

Rob Edwards has been confirmed as Middlesbrough’s new manager, their eighth since relegation from the Premier League in 2017.

“It’s a real privilege to be given the opportunity to be head coach of this great football club,” said Edwards after long-running negotiations to finalise the 42-year-old’s three-year contract and composition of his coaching staff were finally concluded. “It’s something that’s not lost on me, how big this is, how important this is and what it means to people. There is an amazing fanbase here.”

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• New manager ready to helm ‘ambitious project’

• Wilder expresses ‘great regret’ at his departure

Sheffield United have appointed Rubén Sellés as their new manager after Chris Wilder expressed “great regret” over his departure from Bramall Lane. Sellés was swiftly named as Wilder’s successor on Wednesday evening with the Spaniard signing a three-year deal at the Championship club.

The 42-year-old former Southampton, Reading and Hull manager said: “When we first heard about the possibility of coming here, it was a no-brainer for us to join a club with this kind of history and with a mission to move forward and try to be even more competitive. This is a very powerful and ambitious project. It was very important at the start of the conversations that everyone is on the same page.

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• Former Luton manager in line to succeed Michael Carrick

• Steve Cooper and Danny Röhl were also in the running

Rob Edwards is poised to take charge at Middlesbrough after impressing the owner, Steve Gibson. Only an unforeseen 11th-hour hitch will prevent the 42-year-old former Luton manager being in charge when Boro’s players start pre-season training at the end of June.

Edwards will replace Michael ­Carrick, who was sacked when the team finished a disappointing 10th in the Championship, after seeing off strong competition from the former Nottingham Forest and Leicester manager Steve Cooper and the Sheffield Wednesday head coach, Danny Röhl. It is understood Edwards ranked high on Gibson’s shortlist in 2022 when Carrick took over.

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• Head coach had been in charge since October 2022

• Decision taken on Teesside after post-season review

Michael Carrick has been sacked by Middlesbrough after two and a half years in charge. Although the former England and Manchester United midfielder was liked and admired by Boro’s owner, Steve Gibson, his failure to lead the team out of the Championship ensured his first managerial posting ended in disappointment.

Carrick led Boro into the playoff semi-finals in 2023 but they missed out on top-six finishes in the past two seasons. The 43-year-old has become the 17th Championship manager to have lost his job since last August.

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• Manning arrives after leading Robins to the playoffs

• Sheffield Wednesday charged over late payment of wages

Norwich have appointed Liam Manning as their new head coach after the club triggered the release clause in his contract at Bristol City.

Manning impressed after leading the Robins to the Championship playoffs for the first time in 17 years and Norwich quickly identified him as their No 1 target to succeed Johannes Hoff Thorup, who was sacked after a disappointing end to the season. Norwich, who were relegated from the Premier League in 2022, finished 13th last season

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Tom Watson’s last kick as a Sunderland player was a dramatic injury-time winner that secured promotion to the Premier League

For far too long playoffs have felt impossibly high altitude for a Sheffield United side who have never won promotion this way, losing four finals. Wilder has addressed theproblem by reminding his players that the Wembley air is really not all that thin and maintaining that history is bunk.

His hopes of avoiding another demoralising repetition of the past should be enhanced by Gustavo Hamer’s presence. Two years ago the Brazil-born attacking midfielder scored for Coventry against Luton at Wembley and, as the Championship player of the season, he possesses the confidence and class to alter the Blades’ playoff story.

What’s trigonometry got to do with it?

During Le Bris’s teenage years in the western Breton village of Pont-l’Abbé, he devoted his spare time to completing an in-depth analysis of Arsène Wenger’s tactics as Monaco’s manager. As an adult, he spent holidays touring clubs across Spain and England – Arsenal, Chelsea, Crystal Palace, Everton and Leeds included – to watch their coaches. “He’s not someone who shouts at you,” the Sunderland striker Wilson Isidor says, “but he makes you understand things really, really thoroughly.” The winger Patrick Roberts agrees. “He’s efficient,” he says. “He’s brought us new ideas and he’s capable of changing our play depending on the opponent. He’s modern.”

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Blades have come up short in their four previous attempts to gain promotion via an end-of-season showpiece final

When the half-time whistle blows at Wembley on Saturday afternoon, Tom Lockyer will temporarily replace Sheffield United and Sunderland as the centre of attention.

It is two years since Lockyer collapsed on England’s most famous pitch after experiencing atrial fibrillation during Luton’s Championship playoff final win against Coventry and almost 18 months since he had a cardiac arrest and almost died while playing for the club at Bournemouth.

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• Premier League: 10 things to look out for on the final day

• Fixtures | Tables | Sign up for Football Daily | Email Luke

The latest omission of Jack Grealish isn’t a surprise. Grealish is a bit-part player at Manchester City these days and wasn’t used in last weekend’s FA Cup final defeat by Crystal Palace. The match winner in that game, Eberechi Eze, is included. The Palace duo of Marc Guéhi and Adam Wharton miss out, presumably due to injury (although it should be said Tuchel hasn’t seemed entirely convinced by Guéhi).

Tuchel has not been able to name Marcus Rashford because of injury; West Ham’s Jarrod Bowen misses out after failing to take his opportunity last time. Newcastle’s Dan Burn gets another go.

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The club is expertly run but if Black Cats defeat Sheffield United, commercial concerns could be a headache

It is May 2024 and Illan Meslier, the Leeds goalkeeper, is singing the praises of a former Lorient youth coach whose astute mentoring shaped his career. But who is this left-field thinker who dispatched his young goalkeepers to undergo professional boxing training, spend hours performing acrobatics on trampolines and talk intensely to sports psychologists? Régis Le Bris eventually became Lorient’s first-team manager in 2022 but, after a promising opening season, the Breton team were relegated from Ligue 1 last spring. No matter; a month on from that chat with Meslier in North Yorkshire, Sunderland named Le Bris as their head coach and, now, the 49-year-old is preparing to lead the club out at Wembley on Saturday.

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The concept of an end-of-season tournament to determine the final promotions was borne of trial and error

With the Guardian’s unstoppable rise to global dominance** we at Guardian US thought we’d run a series of articles for fans wishing to improve their knowledge of the sport’s history and storylines, hopefully in a way that doesn’t patronise you to within an inch of your life. A warning: If you’re the kind of person that finds The Blizzard too populist this may not be the series for you.

** Actual dominance may not be global. Or dominant

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• Club escaped Championship relegation on final day
• Spaniard won nine of 27 league games in charge

Hull have sacked their head coach, Rubén Sellés, after less than six months in charge.

The club escaped Championship relegation on the final day of the season on goal difference, having been bottom when Sellés was appointed in December. The 41-year-old Spaniard is the third manager sacked by the Hull owner, Acun Ilicali, in the past 12 months and the club now begin their search for a fifth permanent coach since the Turkish media executive took control in early 2022.

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• Former Valladolid manager is ‘the leader we need’
• Hornets finished 14th in Championship this season

Watford have announced the appointment of Paulo Pezzolano as their new head coach. The 42-year-old Uruguayan succeeds Tom Cleverley, who was sacked on 6 May following the Hornets’ disappointing 14th-place finish in the Championship.

Pezzolano becomes Watford’s 18th permanent manager since Gianfranco Zola left in December 2013.

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For a side with such a horrendous record in the EFL playoffs, the way Sheffield United coasted through their semi-final’s two legs into the Championship’s showpiece game at Wembley did little to suggest they are a team with a hoodoo hanging over their heads.

In many ways, history is stacked against the Blades: nine previous attempts at the playoffs, five semi-final defeats and four heartbreaking final losses. But if there was one crumb of comfort for manager Chris Wilder and his side in missing out on automatic promotion with a couple of games to spare, it was the fact that they had time to regather themselves and prepare for the playoffs.

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Blades made no mistake in the second leg, completing the job and will head to Wembley after a record aggregate scoreline

3 min: Early snap shot from Twine, the ball falling loose after Ahmedhodzic’s touch. This time the forward can’t get enough purchase but a moment to get people wondering.

1 min: It’s a slow start. Tommy Cannon is the straight man to Kieffer Moore, rather than Bobby Ball.

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