In the decade between Lee Johnson being named Barnsley’s first head coach, rather than manager, and Conor Hourihane’s appointment this year, 11 men took on the job on a full-time basis. Part one of a look back each of their tenures.
LEE JOHNSON
BEFORE: Johnson had a long career as a midfielder, mainly under his father Gary at Yeovil Town and Bristol City, before moving into management with Oldham in 2013 aged 32. He joined fellow League One club Barnsley two years later, with the Reds making him their first head coach as they looked to focus on data-driven recruitment and youth development.
DURING: Johnson’s year at Barnsley can best be described as: ‘streaky’. He won his first four games then did not win any of the next nine before finishing the 2014/15 season with a 5-0 home victory over Rochdale. He infamously lost eight successive League One games in autumn 2015, as well as an FA Cup defeat to non-league Altrincham, which led to the Reds being bottom in December and still in the relegation zone at Christmas. But he won his last six league games and led them to the EFL Trophy final, winning on penalties at Fleetwood in the semi-final hours before being announced as the new boss of former club Bristol City. Johnson developed the likes of Conor Hourihane and James Bree while taking the EFL Trophy seriously which was crucial for both Wembley wins in 2016.
AFTER: Johnson spent more than four years at Ashton Gate but was sacked during the Covid-19 lockdown having failed to mount a play-off challenge despite some big spending. He won the EFL Trophy with League One Sunderland but was sacked in January 2022 when they were two points off top. He was then sacked by Hibernian – after just over a year – and Fleetwood Town after four months. After working briefly with Manchester City’s young players, a short spell with Copenhagen FC and scouting in Nigeria, he joined Belgian second tier club Lommel in March as head coach.
PAUL HECKINGBOTTOM
BEFORE: The Royston man, and life-long Reds fan, had a long playing career in the lower leagues, with his highlight gaining promotion from League One with Barnsley in 2006.
He returned to Oakwell as an academy coach and worked his way up to first team coach under Johnson, who he replaced in February 2016.
DURING: Heckingbottom did a remarkable job as head coach, building on the good form at the end of Johnson’s reign and taking the Reds into the play-offs.
They secured sixth with a final day win at champions Wigan, thrashed Walsall by a record 6-1 scoreline in the play-off semi-final then beat Millwall in the final.
That was their second Wembley win within two months after also defeating Oxford in the EFL Trophy final.
His squad was dismantled within a year. Alfie Mawson was sold in August 2016 followed by Sam Winnall, Conor Hourihane and James Bree in January 2017 – after they had been seventh in the Championship following a fine first half of the season – then Marc Roberts, Marley Watkins and Josh Scowen left the next summer. Some of those were for some of the highest fees the Reds have ever received for players but many were for minimal fees or nothing at the end of short contracts.
The Reds had no chief executive for much of 2017 with Heckingbottom having to do a lot of that role himself. Later, they attempted to bring in Oli McBurnie but the move fell through due to a paperwork error, and he eventually arrived in January after much of the damage had been done.
The Reds won only ten league games in 2017 and just one in 16 in the build-up to Hecky’s departure, while they did not win any of his last seven home games. He had become disillusioned with the club – which had just been sold by Patrick Cryne to Paul Conway’s group – and, after rejecting possible moves away, told his family he would take the next chance to leave. That happened to be Leeds United, who he had previously said he ‘didn’t like’.
The ‘Hexit’ finally happened in February 2018, weeks after his new contract had been announced, although it is understood that was agreed months earlier and the announcement delayed significantly by the club.
AFTER: He won four of his 16 games at Leeds, including one against Barnsley, and was sacked at the end of the season following a controversial tour of Myanmar. He took over at Hibernian in 2019 then led them to fifth in the SPL but was sacked in November after a poor start to the new season. Heckingbottom’s next job was Sheffield United under 23s manager and he eventually became first team boss, leading them to the Premier League in 2023 before being sacked in December.
He joined Preston last August and they avoided relegation to League One on the final day.
JOSE MORAIS
BEFORE: The Angola-born Portuguese journeyman had a brief playing career as a defender before becoming a youth coach at Lisbon giants Benfica. From 2001, he coached in the German lower leagues, Sweden, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia as well as a spell in charge of the Yemen national team. He had also worked as an assistant to Jose Mourinho at Porto and reunited with him at Inter Milan, Real Madrid and Chelsea.
After spells at Antalyaspor in Turkey and AEK Athens, he joined the Reds in February 2018.
DURING: Those who interacted with Morais during his time at Oakwell know he was a likeable person but it was a terrible appointment as he was totally unsuited to a relegation fight in the English second tier.
This was clear from the first game – a damaging loss to fellow strugglers Burton Albion – in which players were regularly walking over to the touchline to ask what they were supposed to be doing.
They had gone into the relegation zone under caretaker Paul Harsley – now an England youth coach – but still had a squad good enough to survive under the right coach.
When appointing Morais, the Reds highlighted his win percentage in Tunisian football and claimed that the interviews given to other candidates were simply a formality. He brought with him Dimas, who played for Portugal at Euro 96 and Juventus in a Champions League final, as his assistant.
Morais was in Barnsley for less than 100 days but it was incident-packed. From his desk-banging press conferences, to the alleged training ground fight between Dimitri Cavare and Nick Townsend, to picking Matt Mills over Ethan Pinnock in the loss at Heckingbottom’s Leeds, leaving Adam Hammill out of the matchday squad for six games and refusing to play excellent loan signing McBurnie up front. His 15-game spell did include wins at Birmingham then at home to Sheffield United and Brentford but ultimately they were thrashed 4-1 at Derby on the final day and went down.
Morais annoyed the fans by not clapping them after games, except when chief executive Gauthier Ganaye sprinted down the touchline after the Blades game to make him do so, while he infamously said before the final game that ‘relegation is not a failure.’
AFTER: Morais’ next job was as short-lived as his time at Barnsley as he lasted three months with Ukrainian club Karpaty Lviv.
He was then one of the first coaches in the world to get back in the dug-out during the Covid-19 crisis, when in charge of Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors in South Korea, for whom he won two league titles, before picking up another in Saudi Arabia with Al Hilal.
After a cup-winning spell in Iran, in February he took charge Turkish club Bodrum, who are in the relegation zone with two games to play.
DANIEL STENDEL
BEFORE: After a career mainly in the lower leagues in Germany, he became a youth coach at Hannover and worked his way up to head coach but was sacked after less than a year in 2017.
DURING: Stendel was a shock appointment after relegation in 2018 and a controversial one with some fans after the disastrous experiment with an overseas coach in Morais. But, despite speaking little English, he soon won supporters over with his personality – and regular trips to the Garrison bar – plus the style of play he brought to a group of players who should never have been relegated and were supplemented with signings like Cauley Woodrow.
They went undefeated at home and secured promotion with a game to spare having posted a club record 91 points – playing some sublime football.
The Reds sold Ethan Pinnock, Liam Lindsay and Kieffer Moore in the summer of 2019, with Adam Davies leaving at the end of his contract, while their replacements were painfully young and inexperienced.
They stunned Fulham in the Championship opener but did not win any of the next ten and Stendel was sacked after a 5-1 loss at Preston.
The decision, and the 21-word statement that announced it with no thanks to Stendel, were roundly criticised, although chairman Paul Conway replied with allegations that the German had been trying to engineer a move to a rival club.
AFTER: Stendel said goodbye to Barnsley fans by downing shots in the Garrison, then his next job was at Scottish club Hearts – working for free during the Covid-19 crisis until they were relegated in 2020.
He joined Barnsley’s French sister club Nancy and was sacked after no wins in his ten games.
He has since been back at Hannover in charge of the reserves, and is understood to have turned down the chance to return to Oakwell last summer.
GERHARD STRUBER
BEFORE: Following a playing career mainly in the Austrian lower leagues, and a decade working in IT then insurance, Struber worked in the Red Bull Salzburg youth system before taking over at Wolfsberger in 2019.
He lasted just three months into the season before moving to Barnsley but had them third in the Austrian top flight, while also competing in the Europa League.
DURING: Struber arrived towards the end of a 17-game winless run which left the Reds bottom of the Championship. He collected 25 points from 21 games by March, which was an improvement but meant they were seven points adrift when football stopped due to the Covid-19 crisis. The lockdown allowed the players and staff to reset then, when the campaign was completed behind-closed-doors, there was a vital second pre-season for Struber to work with his players.
The head coach deferred his salary during that period.
Despite two wins after the re-start, they were five points from safety going into injury-time of their penultimate game at home to Nottingham Forest, only for Patrick Schmidt to net a last-gasp winner before Clarke Oduor did the same at promotion-chasing Brentford three days later to keep them up.
They had been helped by Wigan’s controversial 12-point deduction but it was a magnificent achievement by Struber who tearfully said on the Griffin Park touchline: ‘I am so proud of my boys.’
Many hoped this would lead to a glorious era under Struber but, when he returned for the next pre-season, he seemed distracted amid a slow summer of transfers and persistent rumours of a move away.
He left for New York Red Bulls four games into the 2020/21 season, which brought only one point, having said the Reds did not ‘match my ambition.’
AFTER: He spent three years in New York, reaching the play-offs twice, then – having turned down the chance to become Manchester United assistant – he moved to Red Bull Salzburg in 2023 but was sacked after less than a year as they lost the title to Sturm Graz.
He took over German second tier club Cologne this season and had them in the automatic promotion places before being sacked this month. They won the title.
VALERIEN ISMAEL
BEFORE: A successful playing career, other than a brief spell with Crystal Palace in the Premier League, saw him win two cups with hometown club Strasbourg then the German double with Werder Bremen and Bayern Munich. He stayed in Germany as a coach and had brief spells in charge of Nurnberg and Wolfsberg before being controversially sacked by Austrian club LASK Linz, who had also been docked four points for training when not allowed during the Covid lockdown.
DURING: Ismael taking Barnsley to the play-offs in the 2020/21 Championship season is arguably the club’s best achievement since they reached the top flight in 1997.
It was sandwiched between relegation battle seasons and they outperformed a plethora of clubs with far bigger budgets.
It has already become an underrated and little-talked-about era, perhaps because the fans were not in the ground. Some say the empty stadiums were the reason the young team did so well in a pressure-free environment, but that is to disrespect their achievements and does not explain why no other young underdog team did the same.
Ismael took over a side who had not won in their first seven matches, and had them secured in fifth place with two games left.
They won seven successive Championship games in the spring and set a club record for six away wins in a row. The ‘vertical football’ style of play bewildered opponents, as did his ability – thanks to a change to five substitutes – to replace his front three with three fresh forwards around the hour-mark. They got to within two wins of the Premier League with totally untested players like Romal Palmer playing nearly every game, while Ismael’s partnership with chief executive Dane Murphy was excellent and led to the signing of key man Daryl Dike.
Once the Reds were edged out in a tense semi-final at Swansea, with limited numbers of fans allowed back in, it looked likely that Ismael would be poached and he soon joined West Bromwich Albion who had just come down from the Premier League.
AFTER: Ismael was sacked by the Baggies the following February despite being fifth, with most Reds fans only seeing him in the flesh for the first time when he returned as the away manager.
He then took over Turkish giants Besiktas before again being sacked after five months and joined Watford, a club notorious for firing managers, and lasted less than a year with the mid-table Championship side before being dismissed.
Ismael was given a long-term contract at Blackburn Rovers earlier this year and just missed out on the play-offs on the final day.
His backroom staff includes former Barnsley coach Dean Whitehead while he worked again with ex-Reds Woodrow and Callum Brittain.
