Who is Jason Euell? Preston North End’s interim manager profiled
He is set to be in the dugout this weekend.
Jason Euell is currently Preston North End’s interim manager after Paul Heckingbottom’s departure on Sunday.
Euell, 49, joined PNE in June 2025 as the club’s first-team coach, and is set to take charge of North End’s away game against QPR this weekend.
He has enjoyed an extensive playing and coaching career. Coming through the ranks at Wimbledon FC’s academy, he operated as either an attacking midfielder or a versatile forward.
Euell spent the first six years of his senior career with the Dons, making 181 appearances and scoring 47 goals between 1995 and 2001. He was playing Premier League football in the early stages of his career, but it was only in his final season there, following the club’s relegation to the First Division, that he stayed and made the drop with them..
He moved to Charlton Athletic in July 2001, returning to the top flight, for a fee of £4.75m - a club-record fee for the Addicks which still remains to this day. Euell went on to become a club legend at the Valley with 37 goals in 155 games. After shorter spells at Middlesbrough, Southampton, Blackpool and Doncaster, he returned to Charlton for one season in 2011.
That was where he finished his playing career after a loan spell at AFC Wimbledon. He was part of Charlton’s 2011-12 League One winning side.
A couple of months after being released by Charlton, he took up a youth coaching role at the club with the under-16s. He was later promoted to under-21s manager and then under-23s boss, helping some big names break through such as Joe Gomez and Ademola Lookman.
In April 2021, after nine years with the youth setup at the club, he was appointed first-team coach to then-manager Nigel Adkins. Upon the sacking of Adkins six months later, Euell became interim assistant manager, working with Johnnie Jackson, who was later appointed manager on a permanent basis.
He left Charlton in the summer of 2022 after a 16-year association with the club over two spells, and joined Bristol City’s coaching staff, working alongside Nigel Pearson.
Euell departed Ashton Gate in October 2023 after Pearson’s departure but was back in work a matter of months later as assistant head coach to Garry Monk at Cambridge United.
He assisted Neil Harris in that same role following his arrival at the club in place of Monk in February 2025, but left a month later and his next role was at North End.
His management dream
Euell has been very vocal about his wish to one day be a first-team manager. It was reported by Richard Cawley in January 2024 that he was interested in the vacant head coach’s position at Charlton Athletic, and he has affirmed his desire to be a number one some day before and after that link.
He told Bristol Live in July 2022: "That's always been my aim, when I went into coaching it was always to try and coach at the highest level. Fortunately, I was able to play at the highest level and with me going into coaching that's what the aspiration was.
“When you talk about people you take things from whether you're a coach or a manager, the good things and the bad things you can look at someone like Nigel and I've got that opportunity to work with him again from the other side of the white line, then that's only going to help me going forward.
"People ask me about the managers I've worked with, and taken bits from and I've always said that Nigel was someone who I could take things from - his leadership, authority and presence. He's very much a people person as well and you have to get that balance in football.”
He added to Sky Sports in 2024: "When it is said that I do not have the experience as a number one, I think of all the experiences that I have had to help me become a number one.”
Speaking of his time with Charlton’s under-21s and under-23s, he continued: “I always played with possession, always played with high energy, because that was getting them ready for first-team football. But I have to come up with a formation to get the best from the players that I have. If that is 4-3-3 then brilliant. If it is 3-5-2 then brilliant."