Lee Bullen: Why a lack of summer break is especially unfair on Garry Monk and Sheffield Wednesday

Sheffield Wednesday manager Garry Monk may not be given the opportunity to embed the core principles of his coaching philosophy for many months to come as the coronavirus crisis continues to wreak havoc on his manic first season at Hillsborough.
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The Owls boss, who arrived at the club six matches into the league season back in September, has spoken about instilling a number of central principles into his players.

His late arrival meant he did not have an opportunity to take a pre-season with the players and the arrival of coaches that know how he works, including James Beattie, has not yet been possible.

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The current campaign is provisionally set for a June 20 restart and the suspension of football due to the coronavirus is likely to see any pre-season ahead of next season cut well short, once again limiting the quality coaching time available to Monk and his team.

His second-in-command Lee Bullen, who deputised as caretaker boss at the start of the season, told The Star he appreciates the difficulty of the situation.

“The way this might end up falling we could finish this season and then go straight into a new season and that would be very unfortunate,” he said.

“As any manager will tell you, you need that six or seven-week period to get to work with the players and really bed your ideas in. He's had to drip-feed in during the season and has had to deal with the manic programme we have in the Championship.

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“It'll be a strange one potentially going from one season straight into the next. You're just not going to get that break in-between seasons.”

Sheffield Wednesday manager Garry Monk has had a turbulent first season at Hillsborough.Sheffield Wednesday manager Garry Monk has had a turbulent first season at Hillsborough.
Sheffield Wednesday manager Garry Monk has had a turbulent first season at Hillsborough.

Speaking to the media late last month Monk admitted the situation was tough and that it hasn’t been possible to discuss the principles he’s described during the lockdown training period.

He said: “It's extremely difficult. You can't do too much of that until you're back in and with each other.

“It'll only be when we're back in that we'll be able to look at that and work on stuff on the training ground. We've done little bits of it but not enough of how I'd like to do it.”

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