Joint-bosses: can Lincoln succeed where Liverpool failed?

Liverpool famously did it once and it even brought silverware to Coventry City - but the managerial double act remains a footballing curiosity.

At Lincoln City, it is now the way of the future.

When League One title-winning head coach Michael Skubala was recruited by Bristol City last week, Chris Cohen and Tom Shaw were promptly promoted from their roles as assistant coaches and named as the pair to replace the 43-year-old.

Joint-bosses are a rarity - one history would suggest rarely works – examples being the few fractious months Gerard Houllier and Roy Evans shared the dugout at Liverpool in 1998 or the underwhelming campaign for which Doug Livermore and Ray Clemence were in charge of Tottenham earlier that decade.

However, John Sillett and George Curtis did work wonders at Coventry when together they guided the Sky Blues to to FA Cup glory in 1987.

As a club with a modest League One budget who had not played in England's second tier for more than six decades, Lincoln's promotion under Skubala last season was a tale of how daring to be different and willing to be innovative could deliver success.

But the appointment of Cohen and Shaw, however bold the move might seem, is not an attempt to be groundbreaking, according to Imps' chief executive Liam Scully.

"We acknowledge that there will be questions about this structure and that it isn't football convention," he told BBC Radio Lincolnshire.

"We certainly didn't start this process saying 'how do we break football convention?' - that wasn't the intention.

"Equally, what we weren't going to do is not let what we thought was the right and best solution be the one we put in place just because of football convention."

Shaw and Cohen, both 39, played a major part in Lincoln's promotion in 2025-26 as assistant coaches who regularly oversaw training sessions and would lead in meetings.

Scully said the pair, alongside Skubala, "developed a real collegial way of working" - sharing responsibilities and collaborating on what was a milestone season that ended with the Imps topping the table with 103 points.

The hierarchy at Lincoln knew what was achieved under Skubala would make the former England futsal head coach a boss in high demand this summer.

And for that reason, the club's management succession committee had plans in motion to find a successor.

While Lincoln offered Skubala an improved deal to try to keep him after Bristol City triggered a release clause, there was already a low-key search under way to find his replacement playing out in the background.

"In this scenario, when you put over 100 points on the board and take the club to a Championship level after 65 years, it wouldn't take a crystal ball to foresee that there was going to be a lot of interest in Michael," Scully said.

"As soon as the last ball was kicked in the season, that process speeded up.

"While the speed of this decision looks relatively quick from the outside, it's because of the preparation that has been going on. And I want to be really clear in saying that Chris and Tom have beaten external candidates to this as well."

While Shaw has previous experience as a first-team boss, having had a spell as manager of non-league side Gainsborough Trinity, Cohen has spent his senior coaching career to date as an assistant at Luton Town, Southampton and Stoke City.

Before that, Cohen's coaching career started with a stint as the under-23s manager at Nottingham Forest, the club where he retired as a player in 2018.

It is the years of work the duo did under Skubala at the LNER Stadium and the part each played in getting the Imps up, that convinced club officials the pair would be the best ones to take the club into the Championship next term.

"The thing we continually asked ourselves through this process was 'what is best for Lincoln City?' This is above any individual, this is above the people and this isn't romantic," Scully said.

"This has been done seriously considering how we put together the strongest possible campaign we can in what will be the club's first season in the Championship for over 65 years."

He added they thought this was the "least risky option" given it is "enabling us to deliver continuity".

It is the working relationship that Cohen and Shaw already have with each other and their intimate understanding of how Lincoln operate that may hold the key to this coaching partnership flourishing where others have failed.

"It's very seldom now in football that a decision is made on the pitch that is just one person's gut feeling or intuition. It's often data-led and often scenario-planned," Scully said.

"Looking at our structure over the past 12-15 months, I think a large strength of what Michael did was that he empowered Chris and Tom to do what they were very good at. This is a very close continuation of that.

"We didn't start from a place of trying to do something different - it was just the fact that when we worked this through and talked about this, we felt that retaining a lot of the structure of what we did in the past is the best thing we can do going forward."