Karl Robinson has enjoyed a rapid rise into the ranks of managerial elder statesmen, but with Salford City on the hunt for promotion, he is hoping to quickly add more honours
Karl Robinson is set to reach a remarkable milestone in football management this weekend. Salford City boss Robinson, 45, will take charge of his 800th game in management when his side face Swindon Town on Saturday.
And for a manager who has achieved things quickly, there is a certain irony that he had to wait a week to reach the 800 mark because Salford’s FA Cup tie with Swindon was postponed last weekend.
Bizarrely, Salford will play Swindon this weekend in League Two and then play Ian Holloway’s side again three days later in their re-arranged third round tie.
It puts Robinson in an elite group of managers with the likes of Sir Alex Ferguson taking charge of 2,155 in his career and Neil Warnock oversaw 1,960.
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Robinson has some distance to go to reach those number of games but it is his age which sets him apart as one of the EFL’s most reliable, enduring and consistent managers.
Robinson is into the final six months of his contract but is doing just as good a job as ever. He had six years at MK Dons, two at Charlton and five at his previous club Oxford.
Salford sit fourth in the table, they have a game in hand on leaders Bromley and, let us be honest, it cannot be easy being manager of a club where Gary Neville and David Beckham are among the joint owners.
He was a non-league striker, coached at Liverpool’s academy and then got his first manager job at MK Dons aged 30.
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During that journey from MK Dons to Charlton, Oxford and now Salford, he has always championed and developed younger players. Former England star Dele Alli was a standout player at MK Dons before he moved on to enjoy a great career with Tottenham and played at a World Cup.
Plus the likes of Brentford’s Keith Andrews, Portsmouth boss John Mousinho and Johnnie Jackson are a handful to have either played or worked under him to later become managers.
Robinson told BBC Manchester: “800 games and people think you are old when I’m still one of the younger managers in the game!
“It is only about the next game. Me and Ian Holloway have worked out that we have about 1,800 games between us so we’ve been in the game a long time. But it’s only ever been about the next game so you can’t worry too much about the future.”
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