This time around a year ago Gary Caldwell recalls watching a television programme about Ryan Giggs’ sudden ascendancy to interim Manchester United manager and the winger talking about the difficulty of telling his erstwhile team-mates that he was leaving them out for the next game. The new Wigan Athletic manager, the youngest in the Football League at 32 and considerably younger than Giggs was last season, names his first side on Friday night at Fulham. It happens to be a must-win game against another side near the bottom of the Championship, which makes it a little different from the last occasion Caldwell pinned a team sheet to the dressing-room door.
“I think the last team I picked was an under-13 side against an Irish select team that were over,” he said, casting his mind back to the academy work he was doing before he was asked to succeed Malky Mackay. “We won 8-1, so hopefully that’s a good omen, but it is not the same when you have to tell your own mates whether they are in or out of the team.
“Obviously it will be strange to begin with, but I’ve been thinking about it for a while, it might be more uncomfortable for them. Once the novelty wears off I think it will be fine. As long as I go about it in an honest way, start as I mean to go on and be up front with people, everything should soon settle down. I do know these lads, after all. They are good players and good people.”
Caldwell credits the former Wigan managers Uwe Rösler and Mackay for helping him move into coaching, granting him the time needed to take his badges and learn with the youth teams when a persistent hip problem curtailed his playing career. “I wouldn’t have missed the FA Cup-winning campaign for the world, though by that time playing was becoming very difficult,” he explained. “I needed an injection to get through training and two to get me through a game, then after that I wouldn’t be able to walk for two days. At times it was probably stupid, but I wouldn’t change anything. I have always been the type who would do anything to play. I wasn’t training much when Malky came in, he asked me how I was and I told him I was struggling.”
Everyone at the club recognised Caldwell’s leadership qualities and helped facilitate his transition to the coaching staff, yet even so it came as a surprise when he was installed not only as manager this week but also given an assurance he would continue in the role next season regardless of whether the club are relegated. David Sharpe, the 23-year-old chairman who drew the line under Mackay’s tenure following home defeat to Derby County on Monday and immediately turned to Caldwell as a replacement, made it clear this is not to be regarded as an interim appointment.
“We will not be judging Gary on the next five games, we know it might take a miracle to stay up,” Sharpe said. “This is a long-term appointment, and if we do go down we want the right people in place to help us come straight back up. Gary is one of them, he knows this club inside out.”
If Wigan do go down, of course, it will be their second relegation in three seasons and will complete a miserable two years since that most romantic of FA Cup wins against Manchester City. Caldwell is the fourth manager appointed since Roberto Martínez left for Everton, and Sharpe even went so far as to suggest the intervening three had been responsible for introducing a less pleasing playing style. “We had a certain philosophy under Roberto, a style on and off the pitch, and I think we have got away from that a little over the past couple of seasons,” he said. “We want to bring that back. Gary prefers a passing game and that suits us.”
The club are surely getting a little ahead of themselves here. Caldwell is not presently in a position to demand any kind of style – he would be happy to take whatever sort of win might come along – and if he finds himself in League One the players at his disposal and the brand of football required will both be a long way from standards set by Martínez in the Premier League era. With hindsight one of the mistakes Latics possibly made was believing they could bounce straight back to the Premier League at the first or second attempt. They came close to doing it once Rösler had taken over from Owen Coyle last season to be fair, only for weariness to set in near the end of a 60-game campaign that began with the Community Shield and ended in play-off semi-final defeat by QPR, taking in the Europa League and a run to the FA Cup semi-final in between.
As Friday night’s opponents have also found out, the Championship is a tough league and recent Premier League experience does not grant you any kind of immunity once performances and points begin to slip away. The template for both of these clubs has to be Wolverhampton Wanderers, who suffered successive relegations from the Premier League to end up in League One but emerged as champions after a single season and have not looked in any danger since. That had a lot to do with finding the right manager, and Wigan believe Caldwell offers stability for the future. Appointing an interim would have sent out the wrong signal.
Caldwell himself is looking for results, beginning at Craven Cottage. The style can remain a work in progress. “I don’t believe you need certain players for certain leagues, it is more about your players believing in the way you coach them,” he said. “Football is a game and it is about winning, I think we get a bit hung up about styles of play these days. My style is bound to be unique because I have to work out a way of playing with the players I’ve got. No one else has these particular players, my job is to find a way of playing that suits them. I might be young, but I’m not silly enough to think I will be judged on whether we play nice football. Managers are judged on results.”
