“Danny, Danny Röhl,” inspired by Daddy Cool’s tune, rings around Hillsborough on a regular basis. Sheffield Wednesday fans clearly love their manager.
However, it was not plain sailing before they would stumble upon him. Far from it, actually. Let’s wind the clock back and make the point clearer.
The 4th of October 2023. In a style every TV channel or reporter would be envious of, Sheffield Wednesday announced the following in their socials and club website: “BREAKING: The Owls have parted company with Xisco Muñoz, who leaves Hillsborough with immediate effect.”
Promoted back to the Championship in May of 2023 after having spent a couple of seasons in the third tier of English football, Sheffield Wednesday unexpectedly parted company with their manager, Darren Moore. Thai businessman Dejphon Chansiri, the club’s owner, appointed former Watford head coach Xisco as his replacement.
To say Xisco’s time in charge of the Owls was an absolute failure is an understatement. In 12 games, he recorded only 4 draws and twice as many losses, failing to achieve a single win.
The footballing institution in question seemed a cauldron of tension, anger, and rage, also fuelled by a public statement released by Chansiri in late September, in which he expressed his annoyance and frustration towards the attitude of the fans. He affirmed that he did not see it reasonable to inject further capital into the club unless their stance softened.
The wheels would be soon put in movement, though, as a few days later, Xisco was sacked. Succeeding him would be a 34-year-old German, by the name of Danny Röhl.
Understandably so, the reactions were quite diverse. For some, it was another cheap option. For others, it looked as if style had been drastically prioritised over substance, in an environment where the ability to hit the ground running and grind some results in the short term was treated as the most crucial box to tick.
Not to mention, there was an intrigue around somebody who had apparently learnt a lot from a host of spicy names, Hansi Flick being one of them.
Time has shown that the latter group were closer to the way it has unfolded, but before we get there, let’s go through the chronology of Röhl’s rise to prominence.
A boy from Saxony
Danny Röhl was born in Zwickau, the fourth-largest city in Saxony, East Germany, after Leipzig, Dresden, and Chemnitz, with around 88,000 inhabitants.
A place well-known for the automotive industry and mining, Zwickau boasts notable people from many walks of life, including music, history, physics, economics, politics, and so on. Among them, there is also the Sheffield Wednesday manager.
Once a defender, an ACL injury and other continuously annoying physical issues would unfortunately put a premature end to his time as a footballer, at the age of just 21. He played for 3 years altogether in the German lower leagues while studying sports science at the University of Leipzig.
His zeal and willpower to delve into football’s academic aspects would help the young man leave behind his shoulders the disappointment caused by the bitterly cruel way his professional involvement in the game ended.
Röhl as an Assistant Manager
Although calculations are absolutely crucial to the steps one should make inside the fierce world of modern football, serendipity plays an important role, too.
Röhl’s disappointing and painful outcome of his playing stints would soon be replaced by the bright prospect of working for the brand-new club in Saxony – RB Leipzig.
Pushed by his burning desire to continue being part of the footballing landscape in some capacity, he was soon after retirement appointed as an analyst at Red Bull’s core institution of their multi-club model. He worked alongside a certain Ralph Hasenhüttl, who reached a remarkable second-place finish in his first season in charge.
Röhl’s eagerness to study and learn as much as possible caught the eye of the Austrian, to the extent that the pair moved together to Southampton in December of 2018. The then-29-year-old would be Ralph’s right-hand man, helping the Saints avoid the drop.
His first experience in English football, however, would be short-lived. Another milestone in his rapidly developing career would be achieved. The destination was from Southampton to Bavaria, as he would become Niko Kovac’s (and then Hansi Flick’s) assistant at Bayern Munich.
As it had happened with Hasenhüttl, he managed to impress the treble-winning manager as well, and both of them were rewarded with the uniquely monumental privilege of representing their country’s national team in the finals of a World Cup.
That honour was not materialised, though, as a disastrous group stage exit spelt the end for Flick and his staff, young Röhl included.
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Back on the Island Again, This Time as a Head Coach
In mid-October of 2023, Röhl was appointed as Sheffield Wednesday’s new manager, both the optimists and the pessimists shared a very sensible common ground among themselves: he had an Everest-like mountain to climb.
In a state of total despair, The Owls had suffered, up to that point, the worst start of a Championship team ever, having collected only 3 points out of a possible 30. Shocking numbers indeed.
As if it was not enough, the controversy off the pitch kept compounding the miserable state of affairs on it.
10 days after the Germans’ unveiling, the club were fined £50,000 by The Football Association for fan conduct in the League One Playoffs win against Peterborough United the previous season.
Then, on the 27th of October, they were placed under a registration embargo because of money owed to HM Revenue and Customs, a sum that accumulated up to £2m. Bizarrely and much to the added fury of the already outraged supporters, the owner asked them to pay the money required, with the promise that the sum would be returned to every donator with interest.
Anyhow, the fire of concern in this regard would be soon extinguished, as Chansiri confirmed he had solved the issue and the wages were paid in full.
Yet, to quote universally famous Stoic philosophers like Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus, “focus on what you can control” represented the best piece of advice for the former Southampton assistant coach. And so he did.
After a difficult November period, he was nominated for the EFL Championship Manager of the Month award for December, having won four games in seven matches. Far from the most splendid outcome in principle, but certainly very refreshing considering the predicament the Owls were in before his arrival.
Despite January being more of a November than a December replica, the season run-in, or more precisely, from mid-February until the end, Sheffield Wednesday defied all the odds, securing a miraculous, improbable, and mind-blowing survival.
Röhl was subsequently nominated for the April Manager of the Month award.
During that time span, Röhl’s men played fourteen matches, losing only three of them, two of which were at the hands of promoted Ipswich Town and play-off finalists Leeds United.
The season was rounded off in style, as three wins in a row against Blackburn Rovers, West Bromwich Albion, and Sunderland turned out to be of paramount importance in their collective goal of staying up, ultimately making a touchable reality at the Stadium of Light.
This season, things are looking even brighter, considerably so. As it stands, not only doesn’t Röhl’s cohort of players have anything to do with relegation, but they are punching above their weight to try their chances for a playoff push. The Owls are currently 10th, a mere three points off West Bromwich in sixth.
Tactics and numbers
In terms of shape, Danny Röhl has predominantly interchanged between a 4-2-3-1 and a 3-4-3/3-4-1-2. However, even more classical 4-4-2/4-4-1-1 have been used at times.
The Owls won fifteen league games under his guidance last season, drawing five and losing fifteen. A significant increase from the drastic 0% under his predecessor to almost 43%.
This season, the ten wins made of the twenty-six games played define a 38% rate, a 5% decrease from last year, although it remains to be seen what the rest of the season will have in store.
Dutch winger Anthony Musaba has turned out to be very influential, with seven league goals and five assists to his name last season. He has two in the current one, as well as five assists.
Attacking midfielder and former Rangers forward Josh Windass has also been a prominent figure in Röhl’s transformation of the team, finding the net six times and providing two assists in 2023-24. The figures have raised to ten goals and two assists this campaign so far.
Other prolific players in terms of direct goal contributions have been the likes of forward Michael Smith (4 goals in 2023-24, 5 goals and 4 assists in 2024-25), midfielder Barry Bannan (one goal and two assists in 2023-24, 4 goals and 1 assist in 2024-25), former PSG winger Djeidi Gassama (three goals and three assists in 2023-24, three goals and one assist in 2024-25).
There is also former Chelsea academy striker Ike Ugbo, who is worth being praised for his output in the survival quest, scoring seven times and assisting once.
The underlying numbers seem to vindicate Yorkshire club’s position slightly above mid-table. They have scored 38 goals up to now, 1.46 per game, and have conceded 40, 1.54 per game. The xG difference is -4.4, the derivative of the difference between xG (35.3) and xGA (39.7).
Furthermore, the fact that Sheffield Wednesday are more or less in line with their stats is also reflected in their PSxG (Post-Shot Expected Goals) figure of 39.2, related to their main keeper, James Beadle.
It succinctly demonstrates their opponents should have scored a sum of roughly 39 goals, based on the likelihood a save would occur. As mentioned before, they have conceded only one more.
Not the most exotic of stats, not least on the defensive side of things, but certainly a huge contextual advancement from the time the German was presented to the Hillsborough crowd.
Conclusion
If you ask me, and I am sure many football fans will give you the same opinion, the German school of coaches is at the zenith of development, technology, expertise, and modernisation nowadays.
It is not a surprise that since the gegenpressing-orientated reboot of post-2004, a vast majority of qualitative products have conquered managerial markets both domestically and outside the country’s borders.
The star studded list includes household winners such as Thomas Tuchel, Julian Nagelsmann, Jürgen Klopp, and Hansi Flick to name a few.
It is crystal clear then that Röhl has colossal examples to look up to if he intends to reach the pinnacle of coaching. Time will tell if he will do it, and it is unarguable that it is too early to speak in a conclusive manner.
However, the signs are definitely there for him to definitely etch his name into German football folklore.