Conor McDonald: The Student

The lads have shown glimpses of their potential since you took charge, although the result against Nantes would've been a major kick in the groin. We'll begin to see some progress before January, and that's when things will really take off for the club imo.

There's a lot to like about the signing of Coulibaly, although his lack of physical 'ability' at 18-years old is a bit worrisome. He more than makes up for it technically and mentally though! Impressive young talent, but a lot of work required in order for him to make the grade.

After a horrible first couple of months, we finally turned our start to the season on its head with these victories throughout October and November.

I knew that there would be a turning point when we needed the results to go on a run and the relatively poor opposition that we came up against in October compared to the likes of Lyon and Monaco in August was very timely indeed.

Perhaps the one fear that I have going into December is the two tough games that we faced against Paris Saint-Germain and Marseille at the end of November. We did grind out a draw against Marseille but regardless, it ended our winning run.

Fortunately, we don’t play another team from the top three until January – when we face both Lyon and Monaco in the same month.

Until then, we have lots of time to prepare as well as a January transfer window. We do not have much money to spend lavishly on quality players but it is a period where we can consider potential options.

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Scott: Absolutely, he's a good prospect and I would like to pay particular attention to his development.
Seb: With a squad that hasn't really been Conor'd, it's to be expected As seen by this update, the results are slowly coming in and we're rising up.
James: The Nantes result was a real disappointment, having fought so hard. Our advancement since then has been good, though. As for Coulibaly, his physical ability did worry me but I hope to make something of his technical ability as well as moving him into a position where physical strength is not as vital.

A much much better two months there. Despite losing the PSG game showed you are able to compete with the best and they seemingly got fortunate with having an own goal and a last few minuets winner. Flying up the table and not having to play the top three again for another month could see you push into the European spots!

Far, far better! Plenty of goals and plenty of clean-sheets. Encouraging signs going forward.

Conor McDonald is now recognised as one of the best young coaches in the game after he led Cobh Ramblers to a completely unpredictable and an almost impossible Europa League victory against RB Leipzig in May.

With the name of Cobh Ramblers seemingly coming out of nowhere, many people were left wondering in the wake of Europa League win: Who is Conor McDonald and how did he get Cobh Ramblers to this level?



Conor McDonald graduated from the newly-founded University Campus of Football Business in 2019, shortly after it’s inception at Turf Moor in 2011. He studied Football Business and Talent Development for his Bachelor’s Degree and qualified for a First.

Throughout his time at university, McDonald also studied and qualified for his Football Association National C License coaching badge.

McDonald has gone on record as saying that his university studies has heavily influenced his method of management, particularly with his approach to youth development which was evident at his time at Cobh Ramblers.

McDonald said in 2022: “First-team football is the most important thing for young players, it is as simple as that. However, it is key that if you are looking to loan out these players rather than being able to use them on your own, they are sent with very specific terms of playing. I find youth development a key part of my strategy.”

His involvement at the Turf Moor campus led him into a role as an Under-18 Data Analyst at Premier League club Burnley. The team from Lancashire had made great strides in recent years with regards to their youth teams under Ian Woan.

After his promotion to become a coach following the conclusion of his coaching badges, McDonald became involved in the Burnley Under-18 side on the field rather than in their data. Upon finishing university and moving back to his home in Merseyside, McDonald took up a role at local club Tranmere Rovers as an Under-23s coach in Birkenhead.

Whilst at Burnley, the youth team mastermind Ian Woan complimented Conor McDonald’s forward-thinking and intensity on the training ground and he was even offered an opportunity to stay at Burnley after university, although this was turned down.



After growing tired of the youth teams and only having a minor part to play in both of his previous clubs, McDonald applied to managerial roles – youth and senior – up and down his own country as well as over in Ireland.

After interviews with Vanarama North and Welsh lower league clubs, McDonald had his heart set on Irish First Division outfit Cobh Ramblers from the first interview.

McDonald wanted to leave his role at Tranmere because there were three consecutive weeks where he was not paid by his employer.

Cobh’s former manager Stephen Henderson had left to become the Head of Youth Development at Shelbourne so the vacancy was open.

The club chairman, Michael O’Donovan – the CEO of a local insurance company – had created a reputation around his running of the club as unambitious and happy to stay where he was. He was criticised for going for the same type of tired manager or ex-players.

In the interview with McDonald, O’Donovan asked him to pull out of any other interviews if he was to progress in the recruitment stage.

In a later meeting with the press, O’Donovan claimed that he had already set his sights on McDonald from the first out of the three interviews for the manager’s job at St. Colman’s Park.



Cobh Ramblers as a club had only spent four years out of their 97-year history in the top-flight when McDonald arrived on the south coast of Cork. Their last appearance in the Premier League was in the 2008 when they were immediately relegated back to the First Division.

Cobh’s only real club successes in recent years were in the cup competitions, with a Senior Munster Cup title win and finishing as runners-up in the League Cup in 2018.

The club were middling in 6th place at the time of McDonald’s arrival with a huge gap between themselves and the Play-Off spots and McDonald’s aims were plainly simple from O’Donovan – just to not finish bottom of the league table.

McDonald began a new coaching course upon joining Cobh Ramblers on an initial six-month deal to achieve his National B License coaching badge from the Irish Football Association.

He took over an ageing team with an average age of 28 that had not a single flash of flair or superior talent in comparison to rest of the league. Right-midfielder Ian Turner was perhaps Cobh’s best player and even he was ageing.

The club finances were in tatters with too many years being spent in the second tier of Irish football and without too much cup success, added with falling attendances, Cobh’s monetary situation was not good despite paying their players as little as possible.

McDonald’s arrival in Cobh was also met with disappointment across the board. The young manager and the club chairman O’Donovan met with a local press journalist called Sarah Kelly who blasted McDonald’s lack of experience as well as insulting O’Donovan’s apparent poor judgement.

Kelly claimed that O’Donovan had combated his reputation for being too predictable by hiring a severely underqualified university graduate, labelling McDonald as a ‘cheap’ option. Kelly wrote that O’Donovan ordered her and the photography out of the premises after an intense argument over O’Donovan’s running of Cobh Ramblers.

When fans saw Kelly’s report in the local newspaper, they despaired at the continuing decaying of their local football club. The fans’ image of O’Donovan as being unambitious was now turning to an image of incompetence as Kelly tore into the Cobh hierarchy.



Cobh Ramblers’ league position did not change under McDonald for the remainder of the 2019 season, finishing in 6th place.

However, Conor McDonald installed a new attacking tactic using the 4-4-2 Diamond formation.

In the period between the end of the 2019 season and the beginning of the 2020 campaign, McDonald began the restructuring of his new club.

McDonald began the quiet revolution by signing a new captain in Jamie O’Hara. The former Tottenham and Wolves midfielder had just been fired as Billericay Town’s manager in England and wanted to return to a playing role for the last few years of his career.

With O’Hara’s experience added, McDonald asked Michael O’Donovan for a new parent club – a club that would feed down young, talented players in need of development – and Cobh were soon linked up with Premier League outfit Shamrock Rovers.

Cobh used their link with Shamrock Rovers to their advantage, signing five new players from their new relationship with striker Danila Bogdanov and right-back Alex Dunne becoming key players immediately.

When Cobh returned to First Division action for the 2020 season, they looked a different animal. As a new arrival from Stalybridge Celtic, Cameron Moore was on fire for Cobh meanwhile Jamie O’Hara’s leadership, experience and on-the-ball quality was vital in a new-look young team.

Conor McDonald took Cobh to the top of the league for the majority of the season. However, with faults towards the end and in midseason when the club failed to build on their current squad with new faces in June and July, Cobh dropped into the Play-Off positions.

Cobh were knocked in the Promotion Play-Off Final by University College Dublin, losing 1-0 over two legs.



After a gutting end to the 2020 season, the hope came flooding back to St. Colman’s Park after so many years in the dark. Conor McDonald’s attacking tactics and teams had brought the fans back.

With momentum and a lack of summer recruitment playing a large part in Cobh’s autumn collapse in 2020, Conor McDonald used January to go on a spree of signing new players, bringing in 18 new faces to the first-team – essentially replacing 2020’s side, with many leaving for Shelbourne.

Jamie Thornton and Tom Harrison arrived from England to provide a new-look defence for the team. At the other end of the field, Harry Warwick was signed from Truro City and Callum Jones was signed from Colchester United’s Under-23 team.

After a poor ending to the 2020 season, Cobh made up for their loss by winning the league title outright in 2021, gaining promotion to the Premier League for the first time since 2007, ending a 13-year absence from the top-flight.

Callum Jones played a key part in this season, scoring a mighty 23 goals in 30 games in all competitions, taking home the division’s Player of the Season award.



2022 was Cobh’s first season in the Irish top-flight since their immediate relegation in 2008. It brought about McDonald’s third major readjustment to the squad since his arrival with many English Football League players crossing the Celtic Sea.

Matt Dolan and Mark O’Brien both made their way across after equally impressive performances for Newport County in the EFL League Two.

Striker Alex Samizadeh was also snapped up by McDonald after a sensational scoring record in the English non-leagues with Radcliffe.

Despite their recruitment of very experienced players, Cobh were still tipped for instant relegation back to the First Division.

Dundalk were the dominant team in Ireland at the time, winning the previous four Irish Premier League titles in a row as well as other cup competitions, national and regional.

However, Cobh backed off the bookies who argued their case for relegation and stormed to their first-ever Premier League title in their centenary year of 2022. They had not been given a chance yet McDonald’s recruitment and tactics brought home a memorable title.

In the same season, McDonald lifted three other trophies with the FAI Cup, the EA Sports Cup and the Munster Senior Cup all heading to St. Colman’s Park to stand alongside the club’s first top-flight title.



Conor McDonald’s reign continued at Cobh for a further two-and-a-half years in Ireland. His teams took over as Ireland’s most dominant club from Dundalk and that will possibly remain that way for years and decades to come.

In his time at Cobh Ramblers, he became a legend at the club, winning four league titles on top of fifteen cup competitions.

His crowning moment was his final success at Cobh Ramblers when his team went all the way to the Europa League Final before taking home the trophy as the first-ever Irish club to do so.

Cobh had dropped out of their Champions League group but finished third-place to qualify for the Europa League for the first time in their history.

They defeated Roma on away goals and Sevilla 4-1 in the Knockout Rounds. In the Quarter-Final, Cobh smashed Hertha Berlin 6-3 on aggregate before facing Zinedine Zidane’s Arsenal.

Despite First Leg defeat, Cobh won 3-0 at Thomond Park – the club’s European stadium due to European stadium regulations – to win the Semi-Final 4-2.

Cobh took home the Europa League trophy thanks to a brace from Chris Savage as well as a header from centre-back Kern Hernandez against RB Leipzig in possibly the biggest European shock in history.



Just a month after the club’s Europa League success, Conor McDonald announced his departure from the club after six celebrated years at Cobh Ramblers in an emotional farewell.

The Liverpudlian left the club with four league titles and fifteen cup wins under his arms – becoming the most successful manager to exist in Irish football.

His talents were spotted among clubs across Europe and mainly in England, with Championship and Premier League clubs swarming around the man who had just taken the Europa League to Ireland.

However, Conor McDonald signed a three-year deal with French Ligue 1 club Girondins de Bordeaux.

Bordeaux won the Ligue 1 title in 2009, before the true power of Paris Saint-Germain’s finances were exposed. Since then, they have descended into mediocrity with mid-table finishes not uncommon.

This season, with a tactical shift from his 4-4-2 Diamond at Cobh Ramblers to a 4-2-3-1 formation, Conor McDonald has guided Bordeaux into European contention once again.



Conor McDonald’s legacy as a manager will be felt all over Ireland and particularly in East Cork where he changed the course for Cobh Ramblers from a mediocre second tier side into European champions within the space of six years as well as becoming an indestructible force in Irish football.

He took Cobh to the Champions League Group Stages for the first time an Irish club has achieved it since Shamrock Rovers in 2011, a superb feat of quality as well as helping the club finances no-end.

McDonald is now regarded as the biggest club legend at Cobh Ramblers and his players have also achieved that status with strikers Chris Savage and Layton Stewart both reaching that level of endearment with the fans.

Through his Champions League efforts and Europa League title, Conor McDonald single-handedly lifted the reputation and respectability of Irish football in a way that no other man has been able to do.

With Cobh’s infrastructure, he and former and present chairmen Michael O’Donovan and Aidan Cunningham have built the best training and youth facilities in Ireland as a result of the prize money achieved through European achievement.

With the backroom staff, McDonald has left a line of succession at Cobh. After his departure, the club’s Under-19s manager Juan Ramón López Muniz was given the job permanently before departing to join Athletic Bilbao as their first-team manager. One of McDonald’s coaches, Nathan Jones, took over from López Muniz and is currently leading the Premier League with Cobh Ramblers.

In terms of the future, there is no doubt that McDonald will drop his importance of youth development so the Bordeaux infrastructure can expect an upgrade very shortly, with planning currently in progress and youth spending already rising since McDonald’s arrival in France.

McDonald is an ambitious coach; he will be looking to take Bordeaux back into the Champions League as well as start a challenge on Paris Saint-Germain’s dominance of Ligue 1.

The Champions League is something of undiscovered land for McDonald, having only gone as far as the Group Stages with Cobh Ramblers. He will be looking to take Bordeaux further whilst simultaneously challenging for a seventh Ligue 1 title.

With his success in the Europa League, some would claim that a victory in the Champions League and to take home the trophy would be the crowning moment of McDonald’s career. Whether he can do it and insert his name into the same conversation as Sir Alex Ferguson, Carlo Ancelotti or Pep Guardiola is yet to be seen.

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Brilliant recap, I can't imagine the Herculean task it takes to write something like this. Usually, when I see something I like in another story, I try to adapt it in a way that I can do something similar or inspired by. That won't be the case.

A fantastic update recapping everything that has happened in quite a crazy number of years. The speed this story has reached the 500 replies milestone is quite extraordinary and highlights just how successful the story has been. Congratulations. The future is exciting, both in-game and with this story. I can't wait for more!

Brilliant read. Will be following this story!

As January business continues throughout Europe, Bordeaux have signed Tornike Kavelashvili and Stéphane Pruvost on loan deals until the end of the season.

Kavelashvili has been brought in from Manchester City along with a loan fee of €875,000 for the remaining six months of the Ligue 1 season.

The English Under-21 international was born in Dzau, Georgia but has been a part of Manchester City’s youth setup since he was thirteen years old in 2019.

Across the four-and-a-half seasons that he has spent at the Etihad Stadium, Kavelashvili has recently made a slight impact on the first-team in Macnhester.

In 2024/25, he made his Premier League debut and scored his first professional goal against Crystal Palace in 2025. The same season, he made two more appearances in the FA Cup under Carlo Ancelotti.

This season he has been more involved with the squad, making four appearances including two in the UEFA Champions League Group Stages.


Chelsea midfielder Stéphane Pruvost made a return to Bordeaux on loan after leaving his boyhood club in 2023 to join the Premier League side in a €4,300,000 deal.

Pruvost only managed to make 13 appearances for Les Girondins during his time at the club, mainly playing for the 2nd team in the Championnat National 2 Groupes A and B.

He was immediately loaned out after his arrival at Stamford Bridge, sent to Serie A club Brescia Calcio for the 2023/24 campaign where he played a key part with 36 appearances as his team just steered clear of relegation with a 17th placed finish.

The next season, Pruvost was loaned out once again to Germany as VfL Wolfsburg took him on loan in the Bundesliga where he featured 17 times, including in the Semi-Finals of the Europa League against Conor McDonald’s Final opponents RB Leipzig.

His move back to Bordeaux until the end of the season is Pruvost’s third consecutive loan move away from England with the 20-year-old still to make an appearance for Chelsea.


In other news, relating to transfers, Bordeaux have completed the signings of Aitor Garcia from CA Osasuna as well as one of McDonald’s former team in Ivan Revuelta – a young Spanish centre-back from Cobh Ramblers.

In departures, a number of youth players have been moved on permanently including Jérémie Graff, Kévin Galisson, Sadissou Abiodun, Eymeric Ugarte, Pierre Besse and Carl Millet for a combined fee of €1,750,000.

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Tango: Thanks mate, it was a big task with the graphics and the information gathering etc.!
Scott: It's been a crazy save, that's for sure. As a player, I've been lucky enough to find myself with a real enjoyment for Football Manager this year and this save in particular, there's no signs of letting up yet.
Tam: Thanks mate! Good to have you

What a turn around of the club and if that form keeps going then champions league football could well be in reach . Also a great post covering everything that Conor has been through in his career so far

What a difference that two months can make! After a slow start to life at Bordeaux, things must be feeling much more positive. It was great to read a recap of Conor's career so far, and learn of his goals at Bordeaux too. There's a lot of work to be done to make them happen, but with the transfer window now upon us: reinforcements are on the way! Great to see Pruvost return to the club, and hopefully... he'll return permanently at the end of his loan. Seems like he was given poor advice when he headed to Stamford Bridge, and he needs a permanent move away from the Londoners.

Some decent additions on loan and finally somebody from Cobh makes the transition to rejoin their former manager. I have been wondering when the first of those deals would take place.

That Tifo interview update was absolutely breathtaking! Amazing work. Two very nice signings for Bordeaux too, and the fact they're 3.5 and 3 stars for them show that Cobh and Bordeaux are on quite a similar level in terms of quality, which is a great achievement for Cobh.

Girondins de Bordeaux have announced that Ricardo Moric is their first signing of the January transfer window, completing a €5.5million move from Argentina.

Moric had established himself as a first-team goalkeeper with his boyhood club Gimnasia y Esgrima and he made 56 appearances over the four seasons that he played senior football.

Throughout his time in Argentina, he completed 18 clean sheets and conceded less than one goal a game as Gimnasia challenged for league titles in the Primera División.

The capped Argentinian Under-20 international signed a five-year deal at Matmut Atlantique and he is set to fight for his place between the sticks with fellow countryman Axel Werner.

Moric will take the number 13 shirt for the remainder of the 2025/26 season.

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tedbro20: You're not wrong! European qualification in any form is the aim for this season so if it is UCL then I'm delighted!
James: It has been a huge relief to put that run together! Pruvost will be a very hard buy to get permanently purely because of his affiliation with an EPL team.
Scott: I've been a little reluctant with bringing in some old boys from Cobh just because I want to see them do well so it's unlikely that I will be after many more

Gimnasia! He looks pretty good too, nice signing!