By the time Sheffield Wednesday named Danny Röhl as their new Manager midway through last October, it was all but a foregone conclusion that the Owls were doomed for the drop.
After enduring their worst start to a season, the Club were rooted to the bottom of the Sky Bet Championship standings.
Six games into his reign, Röhl’s side found themselves 10 points adrift of safety, with just one win in their last 17 league outings – 13 of which were defeats. The situation was bleak, and nothing short of a miracle would save their season.
"When I took the job, a lot of people said it was a big risk,” Röhl explains. “When we arrived, a lot of people didn’t have the hope that we could do this. Even with a lot of pressure, I felt that I was in the right place. I looked at videos and looked at what it means to be a part of Sheffield Wednesday. It’s not a normal Club – I felt that potential.
“At first, I thought, ‘we still have 35 games to go, which is a lot’. What I didn’t see was that we needed so many points to stay in the league. When you look back in the past few years in the Championship, sometimes 45 or 46 points is enough.”
It was up to the new Wednesday boss to stop the rot, and the great escape was achieved under his stewardship as they finished the campaign on 53 points, not turning back after a 3-1 win over Blackburn Rovers in April lifted the Club out of the relegation zone for the first time since the opening day in August.
It was mission accomplished on the final day as the curtain came down on 2023/24. A point was all they needed when they travelled to Sunderland AFC, with their fate remarkably back in their own hands.
“The results weren’t good enough,” Röhl admits. “It wasn’t easy in the first six games. The biggest thing I’ve learned from this Club is about never giving up. If you look back, a crucial result was the draw against Leicester (in November) when we got the equaliser in the last minute, which lifted us. From that point on, I thought that nobody can stop us.”
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He might have been the EFL’s younges manager at the age of 34, but what he lacks in age he certainly makes up for in experience. It’s been a case of learning on the job, and he was no stranger to the predicament the Owls found themselves in, having been in a similar situation with Ralph Hasenhüttl at Southampton.
He says: “I’m still a young coach but not a coach without experience. In the training sessions, it’s about football, which is what I’ve done for the last 10 years. But as a manager, it’s about more than just football.
“Especially in England, it’s different to Germany, where you have a Sporting Director very often. This was new for me – especially in January, in the transfer window and having to look for players, convince them and bring them here.
“You have to make the decisions and you’re the picture of the Club – you’re the guy who’s at the front and you have to be the figurehead in front of the media and the supporters. Sometimes, as an Assistant Coach, it’s a bit easier and you’re protected behind the manager.”
"Even when you work with the biggest players, you feel in those moments that they are still human. That’s what we should never forget – that we’re working with humans and not machines."
Danny Röhl
A conversation with Hansi Flick – Röhl’s boss at Bayern Munich and the German national team – prompted his decision to take the plunge into management. Current FC Barcelona Head Coach, Flick, even paid a visit to Hillsborough in March to watch the Owls beat Plymouth Argyle.
And former defender Röhl, who started his coaching career at RB Leipzig after retiring at the age of 20, drew on everything he’s learned so far when the time came.
“At Munich, I took the winning mindset to go into every game feeling we can beat them, no matter who the opponent is,” he highlights. “That’s what I tried with my team last season to give them that feeling that even if we go to a top team, I always said it’s one game, 90 minutes and we always have a chance to take something.
“It’s much easier to play a game where you can win something instead of a game where you can lose something. In a Champions League Final, you can win a trophy, but when you’re in a ‘final’ to stay in the league, you can get relegated. It’s a different kind of pressure.
“It’s about bringing all those different experiences together and choosing the right pieces in the right moments to make good decisions.”
Röhl departed Bayern Munich as he swapped the Champions League – which Bayern won in 2020 during his stint at the Club – for the Championship. It’s a career that has afforded him a range of experiences and his CV speaks for itself.
He explains: “Ralf Rangnick was the first person who showed me what it means to have a clear identity in how you want to play football; the typical Red Bull football – it’s playing fast, always attacking and thinking forward.
“With Ralph Hasenhüttl, we arrived in a new country which was a big step, then I got the opportunity to work alongside Hansi, who showed me how to lead the group and it’s not just about improving them as a player but improving them as a human.
“It’s a different challenge to Sheffield Wednesday. To building something like at Leipzig, to fighting to stay in the Premier League at Southampton, fighting for titles and then the national team was special – they’re all things I can bring here to my mindset.”
It’s been a whirlwind year for Röhl, who was in Qatar for the 2022 World Cup as Flick’s Assistant Coach. Just four weeks after parting company with Die Mannschaft, he was installed at Hillsborough, and the rest is history.
He asserts: “With the national team, you don’t have much time. When you look to a full season with 46 games, the best team will be on top. In a tournament, it doesn’t necessarily mean the best team will be on top by playing the best football – it will be the team who use the momentum and get all the small things right.”
Time was very much of the essence when he arrived at Hillsborough, though. It was a change of pace for a man who has worked alongside some of the biggest names in world football, including Robert Lewandowski, İlkay Gündoğan and Thomas Müller, to name a few.
“And Jamal Musiala!” Röhl is quick to point out, identifying the two-time Utilita Kids Cup winner, who hit the headlines when footage surfaced of the 21-year-old playing at Wembley in the junior football tournament a decade ago. “I followed his career very closely because we took him from Munich from the academy to the first team.
“Even when you work with the biggest players, you feel in those moments that they are still human. That’s what we should never forget – that we’re working with humans and not machines."
Despite rumblings of interest from elsewhere in the summer, the Owls boss dispelled any rumours by inking a new long-term contract with the Club.
Röhl touched back down in South Yorkshire after spending a chunk of his well- deserved break working on ITV’s coverage of EURO 2024, drafted in to provide his insight on the tournament alongside the likes of Gary Neville and Ian Wright.
“The studio was very close – it was in Berlin and I live in Leipzig,” he explains. “My family is still in Germany and I have two kids, which is hard to say goodbye again after the break in the summer. It was a great week but I’m also happy to have my tracksuit back and be on the pitch!”
Now, his focus shifts to Sheffield Wednesday’s upcoming league campaign. Earlier in the summer, long-serving skipper Barry Bannan and boyhood Wednesday supporter Liam Palmer committed their future to the Club, before Wembley winner Josh Windass put pen to paper on a new deal at the beginning of July.
Wednesday got their season off to a flying start when they ran out 4-0 winners over Wayne Rooney’s Plymouth Argyle on the opening day. And there is plenty to look forward to for Röhl’s Owls – a first full season at the helm and the return of the Steel City derby for the first time in almost six years among other things.
He reflects: “It was really a rollercoaster over the last six or seven months, but the season had a happy ending. Everybody feels that we want to write our next story in the new season – nobody knows what that means at the moment, but I believe if we increase our limits, we can make the next step.”
This feature originally appeared in the Summer 2024 edition of the EFL Magazine.