Burnley and Sunderland Managerial Battle has completed after another sensational star transfer link was surfaced
Ruud van Nistelrooy is now odds-on favourite to become new Burnley manager and Frank Lampard has emerged at the front of the pack for the Sunderland vacancy.
Van Nistelrooy is 1/2 this morning to replace Bayern Munich-bound Vincent Kompany at Turf Moor, taking over a team that has just been relegated from the Premier League. Lampard and Liam Rosenior had been heavily backed but instead it is the Manchester United legend who is shorted money in what has been called ‘the final stage’ of the recruitment process. Bo Henriksen and Henrik Rydstrom are next in line.
Van Nistelrooy has previous experience as a manager with PSV Eindhoven – and he had been assistant for the Netherlands national side before that – but has been out of work for 12 months, having quit when he bemoaned a lack of support from the board.
It has been a long process for Sunderland, who sacked Michael Beale in February and put Mike Dodds in interim charge. Links with Rosenior, Will Still and Pascal Jansen have come and gone.
Lampard is now 3/1 favourite but the Sunderland Echo insists: “Lampard was recently linked with the Sunderland job but is not believed to be under consideration for the role at the Stadium of Light. The 45-year-old recently told Talksport he’s ‘keen to get working again” following an interim spell at Chelsea at the end of the 2022-23 season.”
He is followed in the odds by Lorient’s Regis Le Bris (4/1) and Robbie Keane (6/1), who has just left Maccabi Tel Aviv where he won the Israel title alongside coach Rory Delap, the Stoke City legend. Didier Digard (7/1), who coaches Nice B in France, QPR’s Marti Cifuentes is 15/2 and Rene Maric, a Bayern Munich youth coach, is 8/1.
Championship fixtures for 2024/25 are released next week, on Wednesday, June 26 (9am) and players at clubs up and down the country are expected to report for pre-season training the following week. It is a race against the clock now for Burnley and Sunderland to get coaching teams in situ before welcoming players back. The season starts on the weekend of August 10.
It has been another summer of change in the dugouts for Stoke’s rivals in the division. Steven Schumacher is heading into his first season as head coach at the bet365 Stadium but he has six months’ at the club in the bank.
There are new managers in place at Plymouth Argyle (Wayne Rooney), Hull City (Tim Walter) and Norwich City (Johannes Hoff Thorup)
No one will be able to see your personal information in the community and you will only receive messages from the StokeonTrentLive sport team. We will not spam your WhatsApp feed with constant messages, but you will receive daily updates with the latest Stoke stories.
