He has previously managed AFC Bournemouth, Doncaster Rovers, Crawley Town, Nottingham Forest, Bristol City and Walsall.

[4] When he retired in 1995, he had played a club-record 423 league games for Bournemouth (his record has since been broken by Neil Young and Steve Fletcher), and subsequently joined the club's coaching staff.

In August 2000, he was appointed manager at Bournemouth, and despite limited financial resources, achieved good results, including promotion via the Third Division play-offs in the 2002–03 season.

O'Driscoll left Bournemouth in September 2006 to become manager of Doncaster Rovers during the season the club moved from Belle Vue to Keepmoat.

In O'Driscoll's first full season in charge, 2007–08, he steered Doncaster to promotion into the Championship after a 1–0 victory over Leeds United in the League One play-off final at Wembley Stadium.

For the following season and a half, O'Driscoll turned Doncaster into a comfortable mid-table team on one of the tightest budgets in the Championship.

However, a plethora of injuries in the second half of the 2010–11 season (which at one point even saw the club request to postpone a match with Norwich City because they were struggling to field a first 11.

[16] This sparked an initial upturn in City's fortunes, with 5 wins and 2 draws from their next 10 games taking them on the verge of climbing out of the relegation zone.

On 3 September 2014 the FA announced that Sean O'Driscoll would replace the outgoing Noel Blake in the post of England U19 manager.

[18] On 6 July 2015 it was announced by Liverpool that Sean O'Driscoll had been appointed assistant manager, replacing Colin Pascoe for the 2015–16 Premier League season.