Megson, Irvine and a 'subconscious hunger': Sheffield Wednesday boss Darren Moore describes his coaching influences

The Owls boss, still less than a month into his fledgling reign as Sheffield Wednesday manager, has had an opportunity incredibly rare for a football manager in in the 2020/21 season; time to take a breath and do some coaching.

His methods have been simple, ball-focused and while often intensely tactics-based, have been designed to be engaging for the players.

Football management is a tapestry of different styles and his is a slightly different approach to his old boss and Owls legend Gary Megson, with who he spent successful three years at West Bromwich Albion.

“Oh there was loads of running. There was loads and loads of running,” Moore chuckled, looking back on his time under Megson, whose pre-season training routines in his time as Wednesday boss are the stuff of folklore.

“And you had to be really physically fit, really solid and structured.

“I’d come from Portsmouth and the two clubs were very, very different at the time. But I was going into a very, very successful environment and a very, very successful team. I had some great times as a player under Gary at West Brom.”

Megson is one of a number of hugely successful coaches the 46-year-old Owls boss has worked with either as a player or as a manager.

Indeed, he has had direct contact with a number of former Owls managers including Paul Jewell, under whom he was promoted at Bradford, as well as Alan Irvine and Tony Pulis as a coach at West Brom.

Moore’s calm, measured personality makes it no surprise to hear stories from his playing days that he was always a natural learner, soaking in every atom in information he could regardless of the playing or coaching style.

The Wednesday boss has already spoken a number of times about the need to be adaptable in his attempt to rescue Wednesday from the claws of League One – he has utilised a number of different systems in his five matches in charge – and it is in his years leading up to his ascension to the Hillsborough hotseat that this approach was reared.

“I’ve really liked them all,” he said on his former coaches. “Every single one of them, from Roy Hodgson to Bryan Robson, Tony Pulis. There’s Steve Clarke, Alan Irvine.

“I really have enjoyed working with them all. Every single one of them has done things differently and it’s made it clear to me there’s no right way or a wrong way.

“As a coach, when all these managers came on board and I was part of the coaching set-up, I used to think it was brilliant, watching them work, all the detail of Roy, Steve, Alan. I’ve taken something from all of them and tried to apply it into what I’m doing now.

“You have managers that are very set in their ways; this is how we’re going to do it to be successful. And more often than not they are successful.

“Then you’ve got the other ones, more working with the players to give them freedom within certainty boundaries.

“I’ve worked with different managers and coaches that have different styles and every one of them are successful in their own right. There’s no wrong or right way to go about doing this.”

Moore won five promotions in a hugely successful playing career and may well have secured his first as a manager in the coming months, leaving Doncaster Rovers in the midst of a promotion bid for the lure of Wednesday.

He was quick to earn his coaching badges and early on in his playing days found himself paying more attention to his coach’s decisions than the majority of his teammates, a number of whom remember knowing Moore would go into coaching long before his retirement.

“I really used to listen to every little thing they said,” he recalled.

“It’s only once you get to the other side of it as a manager you realise what I was like. Subconsciously there was always this thirst and hunger to me. When a manager used to do tactical stuff, there were so many times as a player that I would direct traffic on the pitch.

“I found myself not only listening out for my own job, I was listening out for what the manager wanted other players to do.

“When I look back at it now, it’s subconscious. I always wanted to do so well in the game.

“I look back now and I think ‘maybe it was already there?’, I’d get to a Thursday or Friday, look into the tactical stuff and really focusing hard on what we were being told; set plays, defensive stuff.

“I was finishing off my Pro License by the time I’d finished at Barnsley. That was in 2010 and I was still working out on the pitch.”

Wednesday’s two-week breather is nearly up and the attention will begin to turn from Middlewood Road to Friday’s trip to Watford’s Vicarage Road. Word is that Wednesday have worked incredibly hard as Moore, assistant boss Jamie Smith and first team coach Paul Williams have got down to work.

But Gary Megson’s infamous woodland runs? It’s doubtful.

“There are huge aspects of stuff I learned from Gary that I use,” Moore said, smiling. “And to this day I’m indebted to him and everything I did with him from a learning aspect.

“I am so grateful for that time we had together. Under Gary we earned two promotions at West Brom, so you’ve got to look at it and know something is right.

“Like it or loathe it, his methods worked. You earn a promotion over 46 games in a season and it doesn’t happen by accident. I learned a lot from Gary.”

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