Following the Lincoln City journey has been a privilege. Now in the Championship comes something even more fascinating: the only joint head coaches in English football. I spent a day with Chris Cohen, Tom Shaw and their staff to tell the story...
In the corner of the head coaches’ office at Lincoln City’s training ground, where something new seems to have been built every time I come, is a framed photograph. It is of Chris Cohen and Tom Shaw, arms around each other with three of their respective children. It was taken on the pitch as Lincoln celebrated winning the League One title.
Last year was arguably the most impressive season of any English football club in the last decade (personally I don’t even think it’s close to being matched). Lincoln, with a bottom-half budget, got the second highest ever points total in the third tier. I was fortunate to be on the pitch as promotion was celebrated at Reading and stood for a while looking at a joyous away end. It was a mini-miracle, no exaggeration.
Then, Cohen and Shaw were the two assistant head coaches to Michael Skubala. This summer, Skubala took the Bristol City job and left Lincoln, as players and head coaches will do when the model is to be smart, buy low, develop and sell high.
In his place, Lincoln chose not to recruit externally nor even to promote one of their assistants; they promoted both. Cohen and Shaw are the only joint-head coaches in English professional football. One of the most innovative – and certainly the most overachieving – clubs in the country have taken a different route again.
“Michael gave us an incredible amount of autonomy out on the grass,” says Cohen. The two joint-head coaches necessarily have a new setup in the office: two desks pushed into an L-shape. It is a slightly tight squeeze on a more-than-slightly hot day, but most of it is spent on the pitch or in the larger breakout room where we eat lunch with the playing staff.
“Michael’s super strength was to allow people, not just us, to do what they do really well. From a player’s perspective, they probably haven’t noticed too much change in day-to-day training. That creates continuity.
“Michael had the emotional intelligence to do that and it worked brilliantly. He was a great person to work with and we all wish him all the best for the future.”
That makes sense and sells this as a continuation rather than a gamble, but there’s no denying that it is literally non-normal and nor too that it hasn’t worked out at other clubs.
I wonder why that is. In the age of large coaching teams with specific coaching responsibilities, delegation and a devolution of ideas, I don’t think players would experience confusion unless the messaging differed from each joint-head coach. I don’t think tactical insight needs to become blurred because, as both Chris and Tom say, they have worked as a team on that until now.
Instead, I think it’s how the two-person dynamic itself acts that defines its success (and where it often falls down). And here you detect a proactive understanding of that point. It cannot work with ego. It can only work with complete honesty and openness. To be blunt: it only works if you’re really close anyway. And that’s when I start becoming convinced.
“There’s just a fondness of each other, how we work and then as people that has grown over time,” says Shaw. “We’ve had some tougher moments where loads of trust has been built, but really he’s just a top fella to work with as well.
“I think the best bit that knits it all together is we just enjoy each other’s company. We leave each other alone after football and he goes back to his family and I go back to mine, but we spend a lot of time with each other and it’s an enjoyable experience. The main topic is figuring out how we beat the next opponent, but there’s a lot of ambition. I think underpinning all that is just: well, we really like each other.”
“We drive in together, we drive home together,” says Cohen. “We play golf together badly. We play darts together really badly. So we’ve spent a lot of time together over the last three years. We understand the dynamics. We understand when we each need a little bit of space.”
Let’s be frank: Lincoln’s promotion was extraordinary and staying in the Championship would go further. The biggest prize you get for winning League One is to compete in a league where the financial losses are typically greater. For smaller clubs, the contrasts from top of the league to bottom are extraordinary.
At the last count, West Ham’s annual revenue was £227m, down more than £40m from the previous year; Lincoln City’s passed £8m for the first time in their history. Middlesbrough – their opponents on Saturday – signed Will Lankshear for a fee that could rise to £20m. Lincoln City have spent comfortably less than half of that on transfer fees in their 142-year history.
That presents its own conundrum for any new head coach(es), let alone new ones. This team has grown used to winning by bruising the noses of the elite, but the higher up you go the harder it is to hold back the tide of financial prowess. Even finishing 21st this season would be astounding and it takes time to psychologically process that.
“We’ve had good conversations with the players and the leadership group about this,” says Shaw. “Success this year probably doesn’t end in an open top bus parade. So, just isolating each game, without being too cliché, that is the mentality we have to have. We had an amazing result on Saturday against a pretty well fancied Derby side [2-1 win away in the EFL Cup].
“There are going to be some amazing days this year, there’s going to be some tough ones where we play well and lose because of the quality of the opposition. So, we can never afford, when talking about managing that scenario, never afford to be too up and down. Our process has got to be consistent. But this football club, when it’s been the underdog during my time at the club, is when it has come alive.”
There’s another reason to believe in this working out: the club badge. I came here in 2023 and 2024 when Liam Scully and Jez George told me that they believed that they could overperform and finish in the top half; they did. I came here in 2025 when Michael Skubala told me in preseason that something special could build here; it did.
When people in this club tell you what they intend to do, how they intend to do it and why they believe in it working, I’ve learned that you’re better off just believing them. I came here in 2026 and they’re telling me that this can work. They know that it’s a big ask; but Lincoln City have long been a club with big answers.
This is already an achievement; you can never forget to take a step back and appreciate the wider view. By the end of this summer’s work, £9m will have been spent on the stadium and training ground. These are the tangible rewards for excellence that non-financially elite clubs deserve because they are a permanent legacy.
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“It feels that way, definitely,” says Shaw. “But I also think that a minute before Middlesbrough there’s got to be a shift in mindset as a football club as well. We’ve celebrated what we’ve done. Everybody has had the rewards and the emotions. Maybe drink it in for a minute at the Riverside Stadium. But then we take the game to them.”
“We’re always about what’s next, understanding the challenges in front of us – how do we grow it, how do we evolve it, how do we make it better?” says Cohen. “You see the infrastructure and the money put into the football club that is going to give us and people after us a better chance of even more success.
“It’s a club that’s achieved everything by being a ‘What’s next?’ environment. There can’t be a moment when we go, that’s it, we’ve done it. We’re going to take on the next challenge and go to the next place. And we’re going to do it together.”