Oxford United boss must be tempted by Bristol City vacancy - here's why: View | OneFootball

Highlights

Following Nigel Pearson's sacking as Bristol City manager last weekend, the Robins hierarchy are on the hunt for the 60-year-old's successor.

And despite some claiming that John Eustace is closing in on the job, it appears that chairman Jon Lansdown is setting his sights elsewhere.

With the desire for an attack-minded manager on their agenda, Oxford United head coach Liam Manning has been linked with the vacancy, with the top brass at City giving the 38-year-old plenty of consideration in regards to becoming the next man in the dugout at Ashton Gate.

Liam Manning's managerial record

Despite being an extremely young coach, Manning's record is pretty impressive and somewhat speaks for itself.

A person who never really had much of a playing career asides from rotating around non-league sides, Manning's big break in coaching came when he left Ipswich as a youth coach in 2015 to head up West Ham's under-23's side.

His work with the Hammers led The City Football Group to hire him in 2019 as a coaching director for New York City FC of the MLS and then he received a promotion to academy director.

It wouldn't be long though before Manning's good work saw him land a managerial role, and he headed to Belgium in 2020 to manage Lommel, a second-tier club who were part of the City Group.

In his one full season at the Soevereinstadion, Lommel achieved a third-placed finish but didn't quite manage to win promotion to the Jupiler Pro League, but Manning's work had gotten attention back in England, and MK Dons decided to take a gamble and snap him up as Russell Martin's replacement.

Manning was perhaps extremely unfortunate to miss out on automatic promotion with the Dons in 2021-22, losing out by a single point to Rotherham United, but the two-legged play-off semi-final defeat to Wycombe was the start of the downfall, as the departure of Scott Twine, Harry Darling and key loanees from the season prior saw the Buckinghamshire side struggle in 2022-23, leading to his sacking in December of last year.

Oxford were not worried about that though when picking Manning up as Karl Robinson's replacement in March, placing faith in the young coach that his style of football would rub off on the squad, and after achieving safety last season in the final couple of months, the 38-year-old has had a flying start to 2023-24.

The U's have won 10 of their first 15 matches in League One this season, amassing 32 points and only trail league leaders Portsmouth by three points at the time of writing, although the chasing pack are well and truly on their tails.

With a win percentage of 46.43 at the Kassam Stadium club, as well as a lifetime victory record of 47.1%, Manning has so far been a relative success, and there's little surprise to see him linked with other jobs - even if he's only been at Oxford for just under seven months.

Why should Liam Manning consider the Bristol City vacancy?

There will of course be something on Manning's mind telling him that he's got it very good at Oxford, with a good blend of youth and experience playing the football that he wants to play very successfully right now.

However, Manning also knows how ruthless and cut-throat football can be after his sacking from MK Dons, so it's as good a reason as any to give Bristol City some serious consideration.

And there's plenty of reasons why Manning would want to jump ship to Ashton Gate.

Take away the current form of both sides, City have a fantastic infrastructure and facilities - both stadium and training base - that are among the best in the Championship, and it is just waiting for the right squad and management team to push the club to the next level.

Since their return to the second tier in 2015, it hasn't quite happened for the Robins, but they certainly have a lot of talented youngsters that like to play football the right way that could flourish under Manning.

Sam Bell, Jason Knight and Tommy Conway are three exciting talents who have already showed what they can do at Championship level, whilst there is a good amount of experience with the likes of Rob Dickie, Andreas Weimann and Kal Naismith as options.

City do feel short in a few areas of the pitch, but the Championship is very wide open this year and all it will take for the Robins to be among the top six chasing pack is a manager to come in and get the club firing again.

The club of course did bank much of the Alex Scott transfer fee this summer and the wage bill was already steep enough, but there is plenty to make the City job an attractive vacancy, and the good balance of the squad as well as the facilities means that Manning simply must give it some thought.