Morecambe make Ashvir Singh Johal the first Sikh to manage a professional British club
Morecambe have appointed Ashvir Singh Johal as their new manager, making him the first Sikh to manage a professional British club, as well as the youngest manager in the top five tiers of English football.The 30-year-old was confirmed in the role on Tuesday, 48 hours after the investment group Panjab Warriors completed its takeover of the National League side. Morecambe had come within days of being expelled from league competition and Johal said he hoped to play a part in ensuring such a situation “never happens again”.“I’m extremely proud to be the manager of Morecambe Football Club and I can’t wait to meet the fans and show them what an exciting team we can build that represents them and the town on the pitch”, Johal said. “The short term plan this year is to make sure that we retain our place in the National League by playing exciting energetic football and working hard. We want to make sure that the situation that happened in Morecambe over the last couple of years never happens again because no club, no town, no people deserve that.”Johal has never held a first-team managerial role before but has built an impressive CV since beginning as a teenage coach in Leicester City’s schools programme. After rising to take full-time charge of the Foxes’ under-18 side, he followed Kolo Touré to Wigan as his assistant, then to Como where he worked alongside Cesc Fàbregas during the Spaniard’s season in charge of the club’s Primavera side. Last year Johal was the manager of Notts County’s B team while also becoming one of the youngest coaches to complete their Uefa Pro Licence.“All in all I have had a number of good experiences,” Johal said, “and I’ve been working hard for past five or six years to be around the right environments so that when I get the opportunity to be a manager I’m successful from the start.“[Being a manager] has been my dream since the age of 14, 15. It’s been my target. Now I have a new target to make Morecambe successful as a club. I want to make sure that this year we don’t just survive, we thrive, and that there are moments in games where we dominate. I want to make sure the fans have a team that thrives in games.”Johal has long been the preferred managerial candidate for Panjab Warriors with the BBC reporting that the group had agreed to appoint him before a takeover deal had been completed and with Derek Adams still in place as manager. Adams was relieved of his responsibilities on Monday.Morecambe had been suspended from competition in the National League while the takeover was incomplete. That suspension is now lifted, but the club are believed to have insufficient players on their books to compete and it is likely that their scheduled match against Altrincham this weekend is postponed.skip past newsletter promotion Sign up to Football Daily Free daily newsletter Kick off your evenings with the Guardian's take on the world of football Enter your email address Sign up Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy . We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. after newsletter promotion“The immediate priority right now is going to be to identify the players that we need in this building to ensure Morecambe Football Club can perform well in the National League,” Johal said.
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