Melbourne Victory have pulled a cat out of the bag and surprised the Australian football fraternity by appointing Jim Magilton.
Frank Farina and Branko Culina were the early favourites for the job, thrown in the mix along with a whole host of overseas names and local candidates, but Victory have spurned the predictions and made a left-field choice.
The former Northern Ireland international might be familiar to some British football fans, but not all. As a player, the Belfast-born Magilton came through the famed Liverpool production system at the end of the 1980s.
He never broke through at Anfield but went on to have a long career at Oxford United, Southampton, Sheffield Wednesday and Ipswich Town.
It was at Ipswich where he spent the longest period, appearing in more than 260 matches for the Tractor Boys, and where he got his first start in management after the sacking of Joe Royle.
Magilton’s coaching record can be described as modest at best, mediocre at worst. He took Ipswich to 14th place in the Championship in his first season, and eighth in his second season in charge.
But in his third, after he was given a fair amount of money to invest in the playing squad he was axed, with Ipswich struggling for form as it sat in ninth place on the ladder.
Magilton was replaced by Roy Keane, ironically who was a candidate for the Victory job last year when Ernie Merrick was dumped.
Magilton then turned up at QPR, but lasted just six months at the notoriously manager-fickle west London club. His dismissal at QPR was highly controversial, with Magilton involved in a spat with a player, Akos Buzsaky.
There were claims that Magilton head-butted Buzsaky, which he denied, but there was some kind a confrontation with Buzsaky which ended with Magilton being shown the door.
A year and a half later he moved to Shamrock Rovers, where he was an assistant coach and helped the Rovers into the Europa League. He was a candidate for the Northern Ireland national team manager’s role, but missed out on that and was handed the Victory position.
So what can we expect from the 42-year old?
Magilton is renowned for being a fairly amiable person, a colorful character both on and off the pitch who is fairly articulate in interviews, and has a sense of humour.
As a player he was a steady midfielder, a box to box player and generally he likes his teams to play passing football. He won’t suffer fools, and surely won’t be afraid to kick a few heads in the Victory dressing room if needed, judging by his past.
Magilton has also launched a charitable foundation for under-privileged kids with ambitions of becoming footballers, and perhaps possesses more modern-thinking than some football coaches as he maintains a presence on Twitter , though he is hardly a prolific tweeter.
He paints himself as a thinker of the game, but still remains largely unproven as a manager after a few stop-starts. Hired until the end of season at Melbourne, Magilton now has the chance to prove himself, to prove if he deserves the job on a longer term basis.
Considering Victory have followed the hiring of an inexperienced coach in his forties with little head coaching experience with another in his forties with little experience, except this one has a Belfast accent, it is a risk.
Magilton had the goods as a player, and he will have to show Victory fans if he has the goods as a coach.
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