Leeds United, Sheffield United and Sheffield Wednesday - Yorkshire's The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
With one swish of his autograph on a Chelsea contract, Liam Rosenior became the highest-ranked English manager in the Premier League and even global club football.
If Chelsea do not chew him up and spit him out in the course of his laughably optimistic six-and-a-half-year contract, a man who has coached in the under-21 set-up should be well placed to be not the next England manager – Thomas Tuchel will leave too soon for that – but certainly a future one.
It is not a spur-of-the-moment decision by Chelsea's owners, who placed Rosenior at their feeder club, Strasbourg, last season.
It makes the gamble to appoint a 41-year-old who has played but never managed in the Premier League at least an educated one.
HULL OF A JOB: Liam Rosenior showed his talents as Hull City coach (Image: Jonathan Gawthorpe)placeholder image
HULL OF A JOB: Liam Rosenior showed his talents as Hull City coach (Image: Jonathan Gawthorpe)
So if Rosenior is good enough to manage the world club champions, how was he not good enough for Championship Hull City?
In Sergej Jakirovic, Hull have found a good head coach who, aided by excellent recruitment led by Jared Dublin, has made them promotion contenders, only outside the play-off places on goal difference.
But they had such a coach in May 2024, and sacked him when Hull finished seventh in Rosenior's first full season in management.
With the players he had available in the second half of the season in particular, they should have made it, even with a badly-timed injury to Liam Delap. But there is a good chance such an intelligent man would have learnt from his mistakes and got up in 2024-25.
But his football was too dull for owner Acun Ilicali so off he went.
Rosenior certainly would have done better than the combination of Tim Walter and Ruben Selles, without the high cost of recruiting and sacking the pair – the latter despite cleaning up the mess left by the latter to scrape survival.
Working for Ilicali taught Rosenior to "manage up" – essential in the Stamford Bridge piranha tank.
He showed a cool head in a crisis at Derby County. Wayne Rooney looked a good manager with Rosenior as his Pride Park assistant, then successor. Not at DC United, Birmingham City or Plymouth Argyle without him.
As well as getting his good tactical ideas across to players, his communication skills will buy time and patience with the media and fans that, for example, the abrupt Walter never earnt at Hull.
Rosenior's time at Hull and Strasbourg showed his talent working with youngsters, essential to the Chelsea business plan – because that is what it is, not a football model.
It should be part of any club's plans, and in Delap (now at Chelsea), Jaden Philogene, Fabio Carvalho and Tyler Morton, Hull attracted a better calibre of loan player than before or since. Jacob Greaves was polished and sold for an initial £15m.
The added appeal to Hull was he was a former player with a deep-rooted affection for them. It only goes so far with a man of his ambition, but is certainly an advantage.
Even with all those skills, Rosenior could flop at a difficult club to manage. Or, like at Hull, he could do well and get sacked.
But Tuesday should be a lesson to Ilicali: be careful what you wish for.