A former Sheffield Wednesday boss was on the receiving end of a 6-0 defeat on Tuesday night.
There’s a long list of former Sheffield Wednesday managers, and several of them are now elsewhere in the Football League.
Two are in League One; Darren Moore is at Port Vale where after seven games in charge, he’s without a win, and with his side in 23rd, then there’s Garry Monk at Cambridge United.
The U’s sit just a few places ahead of Vale in 20th, though they have a five-point gap to the bottom four as things stand.
But Monk endured a heavy defeat on Tuesday night.
Lincoln City hit Cambridge United for six
Monk’s first game in charge of Cambridge United came against Northampton Town last weekend.
The U’s managed to halt a run of four-straight defeats by taking a point against a steady Northampton Town outfit, though in his first away outing as U’s boss, Monk came up against a formidable Lincoln City outfit.
The Imps are unbeaten in 12 now as they make a late dash for the play-offs, and they put six past Cambridge United on Tuesday night, scoring twice before the break and four times in the second 45.
Speaking to BBC after the Lincoln City defeat, Monk said:
Defensively, especially away from home, we need to be much harder to beat. It’s food for thought for me. I maybe need to reassess. I like to attack but I maybe need a different strategy away from home.
“At home, I think we’ll be fine – I think we can be really competitive at home. Away from home, we need to have a little look at what we need to set up, maybe give them a little bit more security around each other.”
Monk, 45, replaced Steve Bruce as Sheffield Wednesday manager at Hillsborough in September 2019 and spent little over a year in charge, overseeing 58 games and winning 18 (31.03% win rate).
A tough return for the former Sheffield Wednesday bos
All looked well after Cambridge ended their losing streak against Northampton Town.
But now defeat at Sincil Bank has highlighted their defensive flaws and perhaps Monk is now realising the size of the task at hand.
And after four years out of the game, Monk may now be realising that football has changed a lot over the past few years; the tactics, the quality of teams in the Football League, and so on.
But he remains an experienced former player and former manager.
Monk has previously managed Swansea City, Leeds United, Middlesbrough, Birmingham City, and of course Sheffield Wednesday, though his spells with Birmingham and Wednesday weren’t all too impressive.
Those two spells certainly marked a decline in his coaching career and he then took plenty of time out of the game, though whether he spent that time revising the game and working on his tactics and so on will become evident as the season goes on.
Tuesday’s defeat vs Lincoln though certainly suggests that there’s a lot of work for Monk to do at the Abbey Stadium.
Sheffield Wednesday and Danny Rohl meanwhile return to action at Ipswich Town this weekend.