A week spent on Sheffield Wednesday player dossiers - Danny Röhl will play to strengths

A studious figure with a background in analytics, Röhl is a hard-worker with a keen and fast-working eye for areas he can improve.

Those who know him have told The Star of an beguiling ability to break down complicated tactical scenarios with a glance. He can explain them in ‘layman’, we’re told, stripping away the technical jargon that so often confuses and sometimes can serve to alienate us mere non-footballing muggles. He wants to be clear and concise and to answer queries. That’s not always the case in this game.

On the evidence of an hour spent with the media at his unveiling at Hillsborough on Friday, it was clear the 34-year-old is a good, confident communicator. This is said with respect and endearment; there’s a thin shade of geekery about him, mixed with bags of cool.

When it became clear he could be in with a strong sniff of the Wednesday job he rather fancied in the summer, he fired up the laptop. All 12 competitive matches the Owls have played this season were ingested with notes taken. Each player has had a mini-dossier prepared.

Röhl is no data-driven obsessive, mind. It is what he will see from Monday onwards that will inform him for the most part, the eye test complementing and better informing what observations have already been made.

He will meet the players for the first time on Monday. And with an important run of Championship matches arriving fast, the group will get to work.

“It was important to collect a lot of information about the players,” he told The Star on studies undertaken over seven days of analysis. “I watched a lot of matches, I took lots of notes. But it is so important to get a feeling out on the grass; what are the strengths, what can be improved.

“These are things that will bring us all together, we’ll make a list and with my staff we will decide what is the most important for each player.”

There are themes touched upon that do not sound entirely foreign to those of his predecessor Xisco. Chairman Dejphon Chansiri spoke upon a link between the work of the two men; suggesting that where the Spaniard has begin to lay the foundations of a gear-change towards a more Championship-suited style of play, it is Röhl that can take them to the a new level.

Whatever happens to Wednesday on the field in the rest of this season, you rather feel that on first impressions, any difficulties won’t be down to a lack of preparation from the dugout. Where Xisco was criticised in many quarters for enacting change too quickly in inheriting the work of Darren Moore, Röhl suggests that while he will make his solid football philosophies clear, there will be a focus on playing to the strengths of his players first and foremost.

“I have watched every match from this season,” Röhl continued. “They have been very different matches. The match against Huddersfield was the most recent and we started with good energy, other matches we have not seen so much energy. It has been difficult.

“I need to train to get a feeling on the pitch of what is comfortable for the players now. It is not about coming in and saying ‘You have to do this’, it is about taking the strengths of the squad and then bringing my style in as a combination.

“We must be convinced in what we are doing and doing them in the right moment. It’s not about one guy, we do it all together. These are the basics for me. From then we go to improve each phase of the game to improve our style of football in moments.”