Jonjo Shelvey has finally started his path to Newcastle job and ‘the very top of management’ | OneFootball

As a sentence, Jonjo Shelvey has been appointed manager of UAE Second Division League club Arabian Falcons by head of football operations Jason Puncheon, is close to unimprovable.

It belongs in the depths of a fathomless Football Manager game. A 34-year-old Shelvey embracing the Ravel Morrison conundrum and expressing a desire to “climb to the very top of management,” while taking his first step on that journey in the Emirati third tier, feels like a consequence of a rift in the Matrix.

And the grand reveal that Shelvey’s start in management across the final five games of the season will be the subject of a documentary is a) the cherry on top of a baffling, labyrinthine cake, and b) further proof that Sunderland, Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney have a lot to answer for.

By Shelvey’s own admission “there’s no money in the UAE Second Division League” so there will be no move for Zlatan Ibrahimovic. And while qualifying for the 2029 Club World Cup is an objective vaguely akin to successive promotions through the pyramid to the Premier League, it is difficult to see how the celebrity status of a six-cap England international former Newcastle and Swansea midfielder could carry a series quite as convincingly as that of a Hollywood actor and the star of a beloved American sitcom.

There is the prospect of Shelvey expanding further on his views of living in London, where he has vowed never to return “even if my family have a big party and ask me to fly back for it,” because “there’s too many scumbags around” and he feels “more unsafe walking around there than I would being out here with missiles flying over your head”.

If he is perturbed by “people getting arrested for tweeting”, Shelvey might be best advised not to familiarise himself with the Emirates’ stance on free speech.

But if the focus is on the sport there will be a mild fascination in a promotion push which requires Arabian Falcons to catch Cristian Tello’s Palm City, Forte Virtus and Jamie ‘the highest scorer of Graham Potter’s managerial career’ Hopcutt, and the Michel Salgado-owned Fursan Hispania.

Shelvey must simultaneously hold off Matt Lowton and Harry Arter’s Precision FC, as well as the B team of Leroy Fer’s Gulf United.

The coaching ranks in the country already include Andrea Pirlo, Juventus legend Paolo Montero and Paulo Sousa, as well as a quite inevitable Watford alumni branch of Slavisa Jokanovic and Vladimir Ivic.

It is, essentially, what happens when that ‘Dudes can literally just sit around and name old sports players and just have the best time’ tweet gains sentience and control over football recruitment in the UAE.

And Puncheon thinks Shelvey “is the perfect fit for our project,” so who is anyone to argue?

But that stated aim “to climb to the very top of management” really is particularly striking. Having played under a coaching coterie as diverse as Alan Pardew, Kenny Dalglish, Roy Hodgson, Brendan Rodgers, Ian Holloway, Rafael Benitez, Steve McClaren, Steve Bruce and Eddie Howe, Shelvey could have a burgeoning career in the Premier League lower-to-mid-table, complaining about the lack of opportunities for British managers, ahead of him.

And it turns out this might be an incomprehensibly long play for the Newcastle job.

Doing the media rounds after announcing the end of his playing career with the start of his coaching one, Shelvey said he would return to his beloved North East “if I got a job offer”, and revealed that his path towards the touchline had been helped along by a recent visit to St James’ Park.

“We didn’t have a game so I asked if I could come back to Newcastle and watch his training and shadow him for a day, be a sponge basically,” Shelvey said of the support Howe has shown him.

“When you’re a player you miss the little things but I’d like to go in and be around him, just pick his brain, even down to the little things like looking at what he’s got on his wall.”

Whether framed and signed candid photos of Jason Tindall can be the source of managerial inspiration is yet to be seen; it does feel like Shelvey could have picked a better season to lean on Howe’s expertise.

But the most troublesome revelation on Shelvey’s managerial role models was yet to come:

Oh, mate. That journey “to the very top of management” feels especially circuitous now.