Having instilled a togetherness, selflessness, fearlessness and a culture of care among his young squad, Liam Rosenior has built the perfect foundation for future success at Hull City.

On and off the pitch, it’s been a year of progress for both the 39-year-old and the Club, and it feels like this is just the beginning...

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“I often used to pretend I’d fallen asleep on the couch so I could just lay there listening to dad and his coaches talking about the game. It was always something I was interested in; I knew I wanted to be a number one.”

For Liam Rosenior, managing Hull City is far more than a job. It is a vocation, a passion, a calling. Growing up, Rosenior watched his father, Leroy, manage numerous Clubs and from a young age, he has seen management as his calling. Even as a player, he was coaching from a young age, before jobs with Brighton & Hove Albion Under-21s and Derby County propelled him onto the management ladder.

“The best education into management and the perfect transition” – as he describes it – has perhaps led him to this moment, but there is something poetic about his return to the city of Hull.

A career planned for a lifetime began just over 12 months ago at the Club where Rosenior not only spent five years as a player, but the city where he used to spend summers as a youngster visiting his grandmother. It was an opportunity that could not be resisted.

“This isn’t just a Football Club to me,” Rosenior says. “I’ve got really strong links with the Club, but also the city as well.”

Rosenior’s grandmother was a season ticket holder long before he joined the Club as a player back in 2010. Having moved north from London in the 1980s, Hull very much became her adopted Club.

“It’s mad because pretty much a year to the day I took the job, my Grandma passed away and the cemetery she’s buried in with her Hull scarf is less than two minutes away,” Rosenior reveals.

“It’s actually crazy that a year after she died, I’d get this job. It’s special and it’s a Club that is so dear to my heart – I wouldn’t have come back here as a manager if I didn’t think I could make it a success.”

Now competing at the top end of the Sky Bet Championship, it’s been a year of progress for Hull City, there’s no doubt about that. But Rosenior is quick to point out that this is just the start.

“We’re on a journey,” he continues. “The first part of that journey has seen progress. We’ve built a team with an identity and it’s a young, fearless team. That was phase one and when I look at the progress that’s been made, I’m really proud.

But it’s not just progress on the pitch that the 39-year-old is referring to. Progress off it is equally important to him as a manager, if not more.

He explains: “When talking about success, people would probably expect me to speak about results or where we are in the league, but I think our togetherness as a group has been our biggest success in the last 12 months.

“The culture that now surrounds us is a huge success and it’s exactly how I wanted it to be when I took the job.”

Following his appointment in November 2022, Rosenior brought with him a bout of new characteristics to the Hull dugout.

Open, honest, empathetic and sensitive; not traits you would traditionally associate with a football manager, but Rosenior is all of those things and more. And he has built a team around him that embodies those values.

“As far as I’m concerned, the person comes before the football,” he says. “You have to have the right morals to play for this Club and to work with me and my staff. I look for honesty, integrity and hard work in my players and the type of person is really, really important to me.

“If you’re honest, if you have integrity and if you care about one another, I think you can go a really long way.”

Those principles have enabled Rosenior to connect with his squad on a different level than perhaps they are used to, while also allowing him to build a togetherness and culture that did not previously exist.

“We’ve changed the whole philosophy of the Football Club in the last 12 months,” he adds. “But I’m still learning every day. I had to learn how to walk into a new group of players and gain their trust and respect. I had to build relationships.

“For me, being a manager is mainly about people skills. It’s not always about the x’s and o’s on a tactics board, it’s about developing relationships and getting buy-in from everyone at the Club in what you’re trying to do.

“As a manager, you’d be crazy to come into a new Club and try to change absolutely everything, but for me the culture was the biggest thing. It’s a success you can’t really measure, but I wanted an environment where every single person – no matter who they are – feels important and knows they have a role to play. That’s a great foundation for success.”

His honesty means his door is always open, his morals result in everyone fighting for one another and he possesses a level of empathy that even allows him to give his players Christmas Day off regardless of the fixtures – a rare feat in professional football.

He recalls: “I remember as a kid I didn’t ever see my dad at Christmas because he was always training or travelling, so one thing I always do is make sure the players have Christmas off. They’re human-beings and it’s important they spend time with their families.”

Taking his own advice, Rosenior shares that he spent the most recent international break celebrating his daughter’s 16th birthday with a couple of glasses of red wine, having given the players time away from the training ground to “switch off”.

“I think it’s important to have time away from your work environment to rest and recuperate,” says the former Derby interim boss. “I want the players to come back fresh and ready to work hard. I need to switch off too and enjoy being with my family, you can’t take that time for granted.

“I never used to be very good at it, but as a manager, while I still think about the game 24/7, I think it’s even more important to switch off in order to be at your best.

“I thought I’d sleep less as a manager but to be honest, my sleep hours have gone through the roof and I think that’s what I’ve learned most about myself – the need to sleep, rest and relax in order to make better and stronger decisions for the good of the group.”

It’s clear that family is an important principle to Rosenior, and his are his biggest support network, even if they do at times question his team selection.

“The kids are getting older now, so they’re more emotionally invested in the team and how we’re doing – they’ve even started criticising my selections!” he laughs.

“But they’ve also seen the harder times. When I lost my job at Derby, they were the most affected and I remember saying to them at the time, ‘look, something good will come of this’. And it did. It showed them that in life, sometimes you have to bounce back, but they’re always my biggest support away from football.”

An insight into the ‘modern-day manager’ perhaps, but it’s an approach that has earned him respect from his players and is seemingly paying dividends on the pitch.

A well-regarded player who featured in England’s top three tiers during a near 20-year playing career, Rosenior is now earning praise as a member of an exciting young generation of home-grown coaches.

And the former full-back has learned from some of the best along the way. During his time coaching Brighton Under-21s, he worked alongside Chris Hughton, someone he identifies as an important figure in his managerial journey so far, alongside, of course, his father, Leroy, who managed Gloucester City, Brentford and Torquay United.

“I learned so much from Chris (Hughton),” says Rosenior. “He was an incredible manager, but even more so a person. The way he dealt with his players, the way he dealt with his staff, his humility, his transparency and the way he operated; he was probably the most influential person in terms of how I now manage a group of people.

“And I’ve probably taken the most from my father. He’s been so important for all the obvious reasons and I can always pick up the phone to him no matter what. They’re both heroes to me to be honest.”

Growing up in a football family, you could say Rosenior was destined to end up in the game, though his father had other ideas.

“He always tried to put me off going down the same path as him,” the ex- England Under-21 international admits. “Firstly, in just being a footballer, he didn’t want me to do it.

“I had really good grades at school and I remember sitting down with mum and dad when I was 15, they wanted me to go to university because they thought I’d have more chance of making a success of life if I did, especially because football is such a precarious industry.

“Then when I knew I wanted to be a manager, my dad didn’t want me to do it. He knows the pressures and stress, he’s been there. He’s always still really nervous when we play and he’s always calling me to check if I’m alright.”

But ever since eight-year-old Rosenior spent his Friday nights going through tactics and set plays before his father’s Gloucester City games, management has always been his calling.

“I love it,” he beams. “It’s what I’ve always wanted to do and every day I walk into this building, I try to show that I’m enjoying my work. If you’re the manager and you’re enjoying yourself, others will start to follow. I love this job and I try to remind myself of that every day.

“It’s really important to me that my players enjoy playing football, they have to enjoy what they do.

“When I was a little boy, all I wanted to do was play football. That sounds really basic, but that’s how I expressed myself, with a ball. I just wanted to play. Every young boy or girl who wants to become a footballer wants to express themselves with a ball at their feet and as a manager; I’m still like that now. Why should it be any different?

“I had periods in my career when managers didn’t necessarily want to play football and I hated that, I didn’t perform. I want to respect the game and see it played in a certain way. I want to encourage my players to play freely and also be free to make mistakes, as long as they learn from them and improve. All of those learning experiences are a part of my footballing philosophy as a manager today.”

It’s hard not to admire Rosenior as he talks about the Club for which he cares so dearly, and with the full support of owner, Acun Ilıcalı, it feels like the sky is the limit for both Club and manager.

“You have to dream, that’s part of football,” Rosenior concludes. “I wanted to put a foundation in place here and that started with stability. Sometimes you can accelerate things too quickly and it’s almost as if those foundations are built on sand, but I wanted to build them on concrete and create something that was permanent.

“Sometimes that takes longer, but when you set your foundations, you have something strong to work from. Then, you can move onto the next level and I believe we’re ready to do that now, so I’m really, really excited.”

This feature originally appeared in the winter 2023 edition of the EFL Magazine.