Hull City coach Liam Rosenior on the importance of learning his trade for the last 25 years

Increasingly, English football clubs are looking more to coaches who have served an apprenticeship behind the scenes rather than simply parachuting in former players on the back of their names. Hull City's Rosenior has done that.

Saturday's visit of Sunderland will be Rosenior's 17th match as a manager – and only his fifth as a permanent one – but his experience goes far beyond that.

When he retired from playing in 2018, Rosenior became assistant manager of Brighton and Hove Albion's under-23s before joining the coaching staff at Derby County a year later under first Phillip Cocu, then Wayne Rooney.

When Rooney left in the summer, Rosenior was put in caretaker charge for 12 matches until the appointment of Paul Warne. Only in November, when his former club Hull came calling did he officially become a full-time, permanent manager – or rather head coach.

That a club so dazzled by glamour signings in the last window saw the merits of someone whose playing career never earned him any full international caps but who has a good reputation within the game for his coaching skills speaks volumes for how the thinking has changed.

Appointments like Matt Taylor's at Rotherham United and Mark Fotheringham's at Huddersfield Town have followed similar lines, as has Rangers turning to Michael Beale. Even though Middlesbrough's Michael Carrick is a big name, he had a long apprenticeship at Manchester United. All are seen as coaches first.

Where Sunderland's 59-year-old Tony Mowbray is the Championship's second-oldest manager, Rosenior is the second youngest.

"People talk about young managers or experienced managers but it's every manager's job to be the right manager," says Rosenior. "That's what it comes down to.

"I've worked really, really hard to get to this position and be successful in it. It doesn't matter if I'm 38, 58 or 68, if they're the right person for the job, they're the right person for the job.

"I don't really concentrate on my age. You could be 21, if the players respect you and believe in your ideas you're going to be fine, and so far the signs have been really good in terms of engagement with me."

But even Brighton was a long way from being the start for Rosenior. To have had a proper grounding is so important.

"This job is difficult at the best of times and the coach education now, I've been doing it for the last five years, is fantastic but you need experience," he argues.

"It's interesting people speak about me and my coaching, I've done 25 years of coaching. I've wanted to be ready to have this opportunity at a young age and I think you do need that now because it's not just about your players, you are competing against some of the best coaches in Europe in the Championship so I know it's a big job, I'm looking forward to it and hopefully I'll be successful."

Rosenior has certainly made a big impression on Cyrus Christie, a 30-year-old Republic of Ireland international who has seen plenty of managers playing for Coventry City, Derby, Middlesbrough, Fulham, Nottingham Forest, Swansea City and now the Tigers.

"No disrespect to Shota (Arveladze, Rosenior's predecessor in East Yorkshire), but for me personally, I feel there's a lot more clarity in what we're doing," he says. "I feel like that was one of the major things that was missing in the previous regime.

"I don't think we had an identity at that point, either. When things are tough, you need an identity or some sort of DNA to fall back on, and I feel that we didn't have that.

"We were all just playing free for all and people were falling back to what they felt comfortable with and it wasn't good enough. Now, the new manager has come in and I feel like we have an identity, a DNA and people will start to see it the more and more we play.

"They may have already seen it in the first game at Millwall we showed character going down to 10 men so we know that we're more than capable of it, it's about a lot of the lads having the confidence to keep doing it, week in and week out."

Top-scorer Oscar Estupinan returns from a three-match ban which started in November.

Although Dimitrious Pelkas has been ruled out for "10 to 12 weeks" with a knee injury, but the man who came on for him at Watford on Sunday, Greg Docherty, has recovered from a dead leg.