We’re not entirely convinced that anybody worth listening to has actually called Neil Warnock a dinosaur other than himself, in truth, but you don’t need Ross Geller or Alan Grant to tell you that the term wouldn’t fit terribly well anyway.
If there’s anything dinosaurs are known for, like really really famously, it’s that they’re extinct. Warnock, on the other hand, is a fine example of survival of the fittest. (Pedantic geneticists, hold your emails).
Football is a notoriously brutal industry, and managers who do not keep up often find themselves out of work on a permanent basis. Warnock could not have survived at the level he has for 43 years and counting unless he were capable of doing that – and he has brought that to the fore at Huddersfield Town.
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Naturally, there are aspects of his style that feel like a throwback: a large emphasis on the importance of man-management, his direct playing style (absolutely not an insult), his evident admiration for big man striker Tyreece Simpson.
But you need only look at Town’s results to see that Warnock remains an effective Championship manager in 2023. Since returning to the John Smith's Stadium, Warnock has lined up his side in several different variants on a 3-5-2, in a 4-2-3-1, a 4-3-3. Against Swansea, his side’s formation on the ball was tantamount to a 3-3-1-3 – the shape that earned Marcelo Bielsa such huge plaudits at Leeds United. Likewise Warnock’s at times intensely man-to-man system, which is unlike anything else in the division.
Within that, Warnock has been willing to think outside the box with how he has used some players. His selection of Rarmani Edmonds-Green, full stop, was eyebrow-raising, let alone as a right-back and then as a defensive midfielder; he has played perhaps the best football of his Town career under Warnock. Nobody else had thought to use Jonathan Hogg to press the centre-backs when more mobility has been needed in deeper positions, or to use David Kasumu on the wing to add more defensive energy to the flank.
That points to the biggest issue Town have had to overcome this season, particularly with several key players ruled out by long-term, even season-ending injuries: they have not always had the right tools at their disposal to fill all eleven positions on the pitch. But Warnock, uh, finds a way.
That’s not to say that everything Warnock has tried has worked, of course; Town lost that trip to Swansea and suffered back-to-back four-goal defeats early on in his tenure. But where he has found flaws, he has also found adaptations.
After struggling in possession against Coventry and constantly getting caught on the break thanks to silly mistakes, Warnock came up with an approach that did not rely on having the ball. When that approach meant they found themselves under irresistible pressure against Blackburn, he tried to emphasise a return to defensive solidity against Swansea. And when that, in turn, left Town with too little impetus in attack, he switched to a high-pressing style that caused Sunderland plenty of problems and merited more than the single point they took away from the Stadium of Light.
We gave Carlos Corberan a huge amount of credit for that kind of adaptability last year, and Warnock deserves likewise for showing that experience is not necessarily concomitant with being stubbornly set in one’s ways. To the contrary, his long-tenured career in the dugout has simply given him a bigger bag of tricks to draw from.
Dinosaurs still live among us in the form of birds - and Warnock has shown Town how to fly again. Whether that will all be enough to see them through to a happy ending is a part of the story still yet to be written, but to have even put them in with a chance is already more than we imagined possible.
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