Grimsby Town have announced David Artell as their new head coach, signing on until the end of the 2025/26 season.
Chairman Jason Stockwood revealed that interim coaching team Shaun Pearson and Ben Davies will stay on at the club, with the former to assume the assistant head coach position and the latter as a first-team coach.
The 43-year-old was last in work at Crewe Alexandra, who he left in April 2022, with plenty of experience managing in the fourth tier with the Railwaymen, who he guided to promotion in the curtailed 2019/20 season.
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Confirmation of the appointment has come a month on from making the decision to move on previous manager Paul Hurst who was at the club for almost three years in what was his second spell with the Mariners.
Pearson and Davies took five games during the interim period, managing to go unbeaten, but Artell still has a big task in the short term to guide the club away from the bottom places in League Two, with Town sat 21st in the table after 19 fixtures.
Artell will take training for the first time on Monday, with his first game in charge a day later as Town make the tough trip to face MK Dons at Stadium MK, who recently appointed a new manager themselves in Mike Williamson, who has overseen at up turn in from.
(Image: Jon Corken)
Artell said in the club’s official statement: “I’ve been thoroughly impressed by what Andrew and Jason have said and the plans that they have got going forward and I think there’s a lot of hard work ahead, both on and off the pitch, but it’s a challenge that I’m excited about and that I can certainly get on board with.
“I think it’s been well documented now that I’ve turned down a few jobs in League Two, I turned down one last week, and I turned down Assistant Coach at Standard Liege in Belgium before that.
“The key thing is that there’s a plan. Jason and Andrew have been absolutely explicit in the detail of where they want this club to go and I went ‘that’ll do.’
“Quite a lot of other clubs think that I’m the plan and I understand that but, at the same time, it’s not just that. I’ve been mightily impressed by Jason and Andrew and what they have said.”
Original story at https://www.grimsbytelegraph.co.uk/sport/
