Tag Archives: Paul Cook

Regaining the feel-good factor

Posted by JJ (Tony) in Specials and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Relegation can dampen the spirits of even the keenest football supporter. But three such occurrences in just five years, combined with a profligate waste of some £74 million of parachute payments is a real downer.

Morale had not been particularly high for Wigan Athletic fans over these recent weeks. But then came the announcement  that local lad Jordan Flores had signed a new two year contract. It came as a bit of a surprise as there had been no news about the player for weeks.

“Always good to reward one of our own” were David Sharpe’s words as he announced the new contract on Twitter. In one instant it brought visions of a future where Wigan Athletic would at last have faith in home-grown talent, rather than incessantly bringing in loan players. It raised the feel-good factor, at least for a while.

But the warm feeling started to wither somewhat as the tweet above appeared on Twitter. The article went on to quote the chairman as saying:

“There’s going to be a couple of changes before the start of the season. There’ll be a couple of players hopefully coming in, and maybe a couple of players leaving.”

Those words of Sharpe caused the alarm bells to ring. Did he really mean just two of the likes of Dan Burn, Will Grigg, Sam Morsy, Max Power or Nick Powell will be going and the others staying?

A couple of years ago Latics had been relegated to League 1, but the chairman’s optimism over the summer of 2015 was uplifting. The famous quote about “smashing League 1 with 100 points” was a trifle overexuberant, but it set the tone over a summer of huge changes in the playing staff. Most of the high earners were sold off, paid off or loaned out, but the chairman played his trump card in paying up to £1 m for Will Grigg.

The end result was that the budget had been massively cut, but with the parachute money the club was still able to offer above-average salaries to attract players more than good enough for the third tier. Sharpe’s positivity continued into the season and at the midway point he paid somewhere approaching £1 m to sign Yanic Wildschut on a permanent contract. The Dutchman and Grigg proved to be crucial signings as Caldwell’s team won the division title.

Sharpe made efforts to keep the bouyant feeling obtained by winning League 1 by offering season tickets at levels well below the market rate. In the meantime Gary Caldwell started to bring in many more new players than he had previously predicted. The manager clearly did not believe the squad was good enough to survive in the Championship after all. There was no £1 m signing this time around, but ex-players Jordi Gomez and Nick Powell were brought in as marquee players on relatively high salaries.

Caldwell’s team had a poor pre-season and his tactics in the early league games were conservative. The manager had reportedly wanted Callum Patterson from Hearts to solve the problematic right back position, but Wigan’s bids had fallen far short of the Scottish club’s valuation. Midfield player Conor Hourihane of Barnsley was also apparently on Caldwell’s wanted list but nothing resulted. The woeful decision by Sharpe to replace Caldwell with Warren Joyce was to ultimately lead a demoralised squad to relegation. The possession football we had seen under Caldwell evolved into “fightball” under the ultra-defensive Joyce.

According to the Premier League website Wigan Athletic received £16,298,146 in parachute payments last season. Transfer fees paid out in summer 2016 were relatively modest. In January they jettisoned two of the highest wage earners in Jordi Gomez and Adam Le Fondre. Speedy winger Nathan Byrne was sent on loan to Charlton. The sale of Yanic Wildschut to Norwich was reputed to be in excess of £7 m including add-ons. It was rumoured that the wage bill at the start of the season was around £17 m. Joyce himself remarked on how he had reduced that wage bill by the January comings and goings. But the end-result on the field of play was the loss of a proven goal scoring centre forward, a creative midfielder who had previously proved himself to be a top Championship player and two wide players with searing pace. Some fans at the time had remarked that it looked like Latics were planning for relegation even in January.

After his disastrous appointment of Joyce, Sharpe wisely took his time in searching for the right man for the coming season. Paul Cook has a fine managerial record and his teams play the kind of good football that went out of the window under Joyce. However, after the initial hype of Cook’s appointment, including the angry reactions of Portsmouth fans, it has been surprising that we have not seen much of the new manager in the media since then. When Cook was appointed, Sharpe had said that “The squad is in very good shape; it doesn’t need major surgery but he may want to do a few bits if a couple of players leave but the core of it is very good and that was a big attraction to him.”

Since Cook’s appointment a couple of players have already left. Matt Gilks went to Scunthorpe who were able to offer him the kind of contract that Latics were unable or unwilling to provide. Jake Buxton was a rock in defence last season, but has already left the club by mutual consent.

The departures of Gilks and Buxton can be seen as indications of the club lowering its budget, which it clearly needs to do, given its huge potential loss in revenues. Despite what the chairman is saying it would be a surprise if only two more of the present squad leave before the season starts on August 5th.

The question is how Sharpe is going to use the remainder of the substantial revenues that came in last season? Will they be used to service the club’s debt? Or is he really planning to keep all of last season’s squad that remain, bar two?

At this stage there is not the level of optimism among the fans that one would expect with  a new manager coming in who has an impressive track record. The loss of parachute payments weighs heavily in our minds. Will Cook receive the level of financial and personal support from the chairman that is needed to get Latics back to the Championship?

Sharpe’s gesture in offering an extended contract to Jordan Flores is certainly good PR and we can only hope that it is a sign that home-grown talent will be given a better chance to succeed than we have seen in recent years. However, the chairman needs to enunciate his broader strategy.

What is his vision of what he wants for the current season and how he will achieve it? If he were to say that it was to be a period of austerity for the club, with any profits from last season used to pay off debts, few could argue with him if he is looking at the club’s long-term sustainability. If he were to say that he will have to make major cuts in the squad since the club needs to cut its cloth according to projected revenues, then once more it would be hard to argue against.

David Sharpe has a difficult task ahead of him. Like all of us he has made some good decisions and some bad ones. Perhaps his most redeeming quality as Wigan Athletic chairman is that he considers himself a fan, first and foremost. Moreover he is eloquent and very comfortable with the media.

The coming season will be the acid test for the young chairman. Should he take a gamble and back the new manager with a war chest to get the club back to the Championship? Or should he look at financial consolidation and future sustainability?

Without the parachute payments the feel-good factor has dropped alarmingly. How will the chairman deal with it?

 

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How many more loan players for Latics?

Posted by JJ (Tony) in Specials and tagged with , , , ,

Maguire on loan at Wigan.

“Hull City’s Harry Maguire signs for Leicester City on five-year deal” ran the headline.

The fee associated with the move is reported to be some £12 m rising up to £17 m.

I must admit: it took me by surprise. Granted Leicester could probably use another powerhouse centre half in the ilk of Huth and Morgan. But has Maguire’s game improved that much since his spell at Wigan a couple of years ago? Is the price inflated?

Harry Maguire was signed on a short term loan from Hull City in February 2015. He was without doubt Malky Mackay’s best loan signing, forming a rugged central defensive partnership with Jason Pearce. He was excellent in the air, powerful in the tackle, but does he have the passing skills to make it as a top Premier League defender? Only time will tell.

Over the past three seasons Wigan Athletic have brought in no less than 30 players on loan. They have often been young players from higher placed clubs, being sent out for experience. Only 3 of those 30 went on to permanent contracts at Wigan: Emyr Huws, Stephen Warnock and Yanic Wildschut.

A statistical analysis shows that the average age of the loanees has been around 24, the odd 30-pluses such as Alex Bruce, Alex Revell and Liam Ridgewell being balanced out by teenagers such as Marcus Browne, Callum Connolly, Jonjoe Kenny and Sheyi Ojo.

The influx of loan players, particularly over the past couple of seasons, has been subject to much debate by Latics supporters. The clubs sending their players to Wigan on loan can make stipulations about first team opportunities for their players, with financial implications if they are not met. The situation with goalkeepers near the end of last season was perhaps the straw that broke the camel’s back as far as many fans were concerned. Moreover it has been felt that the presence of too many loanees has deprived the club’s own young talent of opportunities.

However, a new manager has come in. Will we see any change in the use of loan players under Paul Cook?

Last summer Cook made two summer loan signings for Portsmouth. The 36 year old goalkeeper David Forde was acquired for a season-long loan from Millwall, going on to make 47 appearances. Dominic Hyam, 20, was loaned from Reading, but made no appearances. Interestingly the January loan window saw Cook pick up Eion Doyle, 28, from Preston, who was to make 12 appearances. But the 19 year old Aaron Simpson, from Wolves, suffered the same fate as Hyam, making no appearances.

Among the theories put forward by Portsmouth supporters regarding the manager’s surprise exit was that the new ownership would appoint a director of football. It was an idea mooted at Wigan too, but did not come into fruition. However, as manager at Wigan he will need to take a look at the link between the recruiting department and the coaching staff. Not only have experienced players been signed who have not made their mark, but those who could be loosely labeled “players for the future” have been given minimal opportunities on the field of play.

The present squad includes players like Jack Byrne, Josh Laurent, Dan Lavercombe, Mikael Mandron, Sanmi Odelusi and Kaiyne Woolery. All were seemingly signed for the future but have made hardly a handful of appearances between them. They are in their early twenties and were bargain signings from other clubs. Danny Whitehead also falls into that category, although he no longer appears in the first team squad on the club website. Yesterday’s new signing Terell Thomas, 19, will hope that he will receive more opportunity than his predecessors have had.

The current first team squad also contains six players who have come through the academy and the development squad – Luke Burgess, Callum Lang, Owen Evans, Josh Gregory and Christopher Merrie and Sam Stubbs. Last season Luke Burke made the transition to the first team, making an immediate impact at the start of the season. Sadly he was underutilized as the season progressed.

The futures of the “players for the future”, both homegrown talent and those brought in from other clubs, will depend on them being given opportunity to develop. Some will be sent off on loan to other clubs to get more experience, but far too often in recent years such players have not come back to have an impact on the first team. So often loan players from other clubs have been given opportunities in their stead.

An article from the Portsmouth News entitled “Pompey deny Wigan to retain coaches” has informed us that Robbie Blake nor John Keeley will be leaving Portsmouth, although physios Nick Meace and Andy Proctor may be on their way to Wigan. It says they are confident that head of player recruitment, Nick Howarth, will be staying.

Cook is gradually putting together his coaching and backroom team at Wigan. With the pre-season looming he will be keen to get that sorted as soon as he can. We can only hope that there is a better connection between recruitment and coaching than we have seen at Wigan in recent years. Moreover that there will be a planned strategy towards the recruitment of loan players from other clubs, bearing in mind the presence of the club’s own young talent.

The departure of Matt Gilks to Scunthorpe this week is indicative of the club being unwilling to offer him a contract as good as that put forward by the Irons. It appears that Gilks had a get-out clause in his contract in case relegation occurred. Having spent much of his career in the higher divisions he would have been accustomed to the kinds of salaries offered at those levels. Given such a scenario it is unlikely that Paul Cook will either be handed a large war chest for potential transfers, nor be able to offer salaries that give him a competitive advantage over other contenders in the division.

Yet again it is a time of change at Wigan, this time involving wholesale changes in coaching and backroom personnel. Moreover we can expect considerable player turnover over the coming weeks, with an exodus of the higher earners.

Of all 30 loan players at Wigan in the past three years it can be argued that Stephen Warnock and Yanic Wildschut made the greatest impact at the club. But Harry Maguire did a solid job and it remains to be seen whether he will ultimately be the most successful of those loan players in his career that follows.

Will Cook’s loan signings play an important role this season? Or will he prefer to utilize players he already has at the club?

Or will it be a healthy balance between the two?

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Seeking a balance in midfield

Posted by JJ (Tony) in Other and tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

A more balanced midfield with Paul Cook in charge?

“So close to a famous win, absolutely devastated. Atmosphere was incredible.”

So tweeted James McArthur after Harry Kane’s late equaliser had robbed them of victory in a game they did not really deserve to win.

He had come on as a substitute at the beginning of the second half in the cauldron that Hampden Park so often can be. In the eyes of an admittedly biased Wigan Athletic fan he should have been on from the start, but James Morrison and Scott Brown were chosen instead.

But seeing McArthur brought back memories of his partnership with James McCarthy. Both were signed from a modest club in Hamilton Academical, seemingly “players for the future”. But what a future it proved to be for them at Wigan as the pair became the engine room of the club’s greatest ever successes. Pitched up against the likes of Gerrard, Lampard and Scholes they held their own, famous victories over England’s richest and most powerful clubs resulting.

Roberto Martinez had developed what was loosely called a 3-4-3 system. McArthur and McCarthy supplied the energy and vision from the centre of midfield, with the excellent wing backs Emmerson Boyce and Jean Beausejour providing the width. One of the front three, Shaun Maloney or Jordi Gomez, would drop back to reinforce midfield and add to the creativity. The end result was a balanced midfield, capable of challenging the best in the land.

It is more than three years now since McArthur left Wigan, McCarthy having gone a year earlier. Since then Latics have had a plethora of midfield players pass through the club. The Macs had played together for three years, developing a mutual understanding, covering for each other when it was needed.

But last season that kind of understanding was sadly lacking, players too often being unable to find their teammates with their passes. Midfield players who had been key in winning League 1 the previous season had clearly found the step up to the Championship a tough one. Perhaps Gary Caldwell had realised that the midfielders of the title winning team might struggle in the higher division. He brought in reinforcements in Shaun MacDonald, Alex Gilbey and Nick Powell, but the latter two were to be stricken by injury. MacDonald had been a box to box midfielder at Bournemouth, but Caldwell was to use him in a “Busquets role” in front of the back four. He had used Sam Morsy in that role in the previous season, but the player had been dispatched off to Barnsley on loan.

MacDonald went on to become a rock in front of the defence, also being favoured by Warren Joyce when he arrived in November. Although he would rarely show the range of passing that we had seen from Morsy, MacDonald was equally firm in the tackle and his reading of the game. Moreover he was strong in the air. Sadly his horrendous injury at Reading is likely to rule him out for the large part of the coming season.

As part of his return from Barnsley, Morsy had been offered an improved contract with Joyce being keen to get him back. With MacDonald anchoring at the back, Morsy was pushed forward into a more creative role where he initially seemed to thrive. However, Joyce’s obsession with 4-5-1 was to mean that any midfielder’s role was to be primarily defensive. Like the other midfielders, Morsy just did not look as effective as he had earlier. The midfield was to shoulder the bulk of the frustration of fans wanting to see them push further forward to support the lone centre forward. The lack of creativity was to be exacerbated as Joyce was to play four central midfielders in his starting line-up, a tactic that was also to be followed by Graham Barrow when he took over as caretaker manager.

Latics fans will be hoping for a more positive approach from new manager Paul Cook. Cook’s preferred formation appears to be 4-2-3-1, so it is unlikely he will use someone in the anchor role occupied by MacDonald. David Perkins has been given a new short term contract, although he is now 35. However, Perkins was the Player of the Year in League 1 in 2015-16 and his infectious enthusiasm was a key element in the team’s success. Max Power was the subject of an offer by Birmingham City in January. Although he had a disappointing season he remains a young player with good technique who might well benefit from a move. Morsy has already proved himself in League 1 and would surely be in contention for a place, but his increased salary might prove too much for Latics to swallow, given their much decreasing revenues. It would be no surprise if both Power and Morsy were sold over the summer.

Cook already has players who can form the trio behind the centre forward. He has those who can play wide in Michael Jacobs and Nathan Byrne, plus “number 10s” in Jack Byrne, Alex Gilbey, Josh Laurent and Nick Powell. Nathan Byrne has genuine pace, making Joyce’s decision to send him on loan to Charlton difficult to understand. With both Wildschut and Byrne leaving his side was distinctly short of pace. Rumour suggests that Byrne had a falling out with the manager and was dispatched as a result. It could be that the player has already burnt his bridges at Wigan and will be gone over summer, but he has a fine record in League 1 and could be an important player, if he were to stay. Salary could also be an issue.

For the moment Latics are short on holding midfielders and Cook will be looking at bringing in at least a couple more. He will also look for more wide players. Jordan Flores can play wide on the left of midfield, but there is still no news of him signing a new contract.

Finding the right balance in midfield will be of paramount importance to Paul Cook if he is to build a squad good enough to get the club back to the Championship division. Continuity is something that has been so lacking at Wigan over the past three seasons. Ideally Cook will put together a midfield not only to get the club out of League 1, but also one which can serve the club more long-term as did the “Macs” in the Martinez era.

 

 

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Latics fans react to Paul Cook’s arrival on social media

Posted by JJ (Tony) in Social Media and tagged with , , ,

After the lulls of the past weeks Paul Cook’s arrival at Wigan has produced a considerable stir on the social media and message boards. Not least of that were torrents of vitriol from Portsmouth fans angry that Cook had left them with a year still left on his contract.

However, Portsmouth acted quickly to calm the storm, in appointing Kenny Jackett their new manager. One Pompey fan tweeted:

But the mood of Latics fans has certainly been uplifted. Will that Pompey fan rue his prediction by the end of the season?

We trawled the social media following Cook’s appointment and came up with some  very positive responses from Latics fans. Our thanks go to the Cockney Latic Forum, the Vital Wigan – Latics Speyk Forum, the Boulevard of Broken Dreams on Facebook and Twitter for providing the media for the posts below to happen. Thanks go to all whose contributions are identified below:

Gaz_Latic on Latics Speyk compared Cook and Jackett:

IMO, we’ve probably both got good deals. Jackett would have been an Owen Coyle-esque appointment here. His style doesn’t fit with the players or fans (at least half) expectations while Cook obviously didn’t fit in the same way down there. I would expect us to finish higher than Pompey next season purely on the squads as they are now – but much can change between now and the start of the season.

For me the attacking talents of Powell, Jacobs, Grigg and Bogle are almost unmatched in this league but much depends on how they are deployed and the service they receive. Cook has shown in the past he is able to get plenty out of meagre attacking talents – think Gary Roberts and Padraig Amond, imagine what he’ll do (we hope he will anyway!) with Bogle and Grigg. Jackett on the other hand has a habit of doing good jobs with unremarkable teams but rarely has he been able to turn early success into something remarkable. At Swansea, Millwall and Wolves he began well but plateaued in later seasons. One could argue that Cook overachieved at both Chesterfield and Sligo while was largely in line with expectations at Pompey.

So make of it what you will but I suspect that come the first games of August neither Wigan or Pompey fans will be ruing either appointment.

 Kev @kevwafc tweeted:

All I want Paul Cook to do next season is make me look forward to watching a few games of actual football and that’ll do for me  #wafc

Colin Prunty on the Boulevard of Broken Dreams commented:

Appointing an ex player gets my vote . Caldwell, Martinez and Jewell and Barrow (94-95)all had success of some kind or other during their time.needs time though and the constant sacking of managers needs to stop in my view.

The_Wigan_Whopper on Latics Speyk commented:

Happy with the appointment overall – he’s a Latics hero to me. Got to get behind him and the team now. Up the tics!

 King_dezeeuw06 on Latics Speyk added:

 Glad it’s finally done and we can finally put a really frustrating and difficult period behind us and go into our next season with a clean slate and hopefully some excitment and optimism. It seems Sharpe and the club showed some real ambition with the money they paid to get Cook in, so credit to them. I think it’s a really good appointment, some will have their doubts no matter who we hired as no one choice can please everyone, but Cooks record is very good so let’s be positive and get behind him.

Jimmyc on the Cockney Latic Forum opined:

This looks like a decent appointment with some logic behind it from young Sharpy. Quite looking forward to next season..

Goodbrand Stats @StatsChristian tweeted:

Paul Cook has won 2 league titles & reached #Playoffs twice in his last seasons as a manager. Good #Wigan appointment.

David Green on the Boulevard of Broken Dreams said:

We have got our new manager in paul cook he may or may not be the choice of everyone but everyone will have their oppinion but all we can do is get behind paul and the lads . Im not saying we are going to take league 1 by storm like we did after christmas last time but we know what the league is all about and that is grinding out a result so that should stand us in good stead. Paul needs to be given the time to make his mark on the club. Remember the last paul (jewell) that was manager he didnt get off to the best of starts but he got the time and we all know the rest is history.

Jrfatfan on the Cockney Latic Forum commented:

Welcome on board Paul, best wishes for the season ahead. Whether it be 442, 351 or 531 hope you have a successful time back at the club you started out at all those years ago.

Try to keep of this board as there are some moaning gits who have started off already before the inks dry on your 3 year contract. It may take a few months to sort out the team and tactics but most of us will be right behind you and the boys. We fully understand that there might be defeats before you get it right so just ignore the Victor Meldrews who will be on here at 5.05pm following every defeat or draw.

All the best for the next 3 seasons be it one up front or 10 up front.

Vincehill on the Cockney Latic Forum concluded:

A very good appointment which shows ambition and listening to Paul cook today during his opening interview reminded me very much of a certain Paul Jewell when he came back to the club in 2001

They have also given him a 3 year contract but please young David let him have the time to do the job because to be now on the seventh manager in under 4 years is frankly ridiculous especially when we only had 4 in the previous 12 !

I’m also pleased he is an ex player as there have been no failures with any ex players in the management role and I get a good vibe with this one as we have to get it right some time.

Best line in that interview was from the interviewer himself “Welcome back Paul ,what are your first impressions of the place ?”

Quality

Whittleblue on Latics Speyk was a little sceptical:

 I understand the rationale behind the appointment and let’s be blunt there wasn’t exactly a great choice out there or any outstanding candidate. Don’t think he’s the right fit for us at this time however, though I’m hoping to be proven wrong. Hopefully he can stay out of controversy and manage to find himself a suit to look the part. Best of luck to him.

Runcornfan1978 on the Cockney Latic Forum was optimistic:

I actually think he will be given the time to turn things around.As for a borefest. Pompey were amongst the top in the goals chart last season.

Hopefully we have now found someone who can get the best out of & has the perfect knowledge of the lone striker system. If played correctly, this formation produces goals just as much as any other. formation.I also like how he has been allowed to bring in his own staff.

Predicting good things next season, i am!!!

True Believer on Latics Speyk acknowledged the need for stability:

Hopefully we can all give him time. He needs to feel that we the fans are with him and allow him the time he needs to change the losing mentality we have gotten into. He needs the board to back him and not get edgy if things don’t happen immediately. It has been said before and I will reiterate it that the club needs stability on and off the pitch and we as fans need to play our part. Good Luck Paul and welcome back.

Donnyspage responded on “How many in and out before end of August” on the Cockney Latic Forum:

Personally as few as possible but who knows. Obvious ones that will leave are the long term loaned out players from last season. Hopefully we won’t be selling the likes of Grigg, Burn, Powell etc. I hope we have a small squad fighting to get a game. Do we really need to bring any players in? All have been brought in to play the type of game Cook plays so no need for them to adapt. Two strikers is ample as only one will be playing and providing none are injured. As little disruption as possible should see us ok. Paul as inherited a squad that should fly up the league. They just need managing. All that said, this is Latics so it will be more likely ten out and ten in and a practice ground for half a dozen loanees whose heart and minds lie elsewhere.

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More upheaval for Latics over summer?

Posted by JJ (Tony) in Reflections and tagged with , ,

“The squad is in good shape: it doesn’t need major surgery.”

Journalists use headlines to grab our attention. Sometimes they give us a good idea of what the article is all about, sometimes less so. Some internet sites use information already made public on others, repackaging it under a different label or more compelling headline. After a while you get to know which sites do that and learn to steer clear and not be drawn in.

If you get most of your Latics news from the internet you will almost certainly be using a news aggregator. NewsNow is the one I most commonly employ to check out Latics facts, opinions and gossip. Every day they give a list of the most  popular clicks and the other day  I found one at the top of their list entitled “From a Wigan reject to a Serie A star – Rangers’ rebuild gets serious.”

It was by no means a bad article, published on a Rangers fan site, largely enthusing about the Scottish club’s signing of an experienced Portuguese defender.  But what had drawn me to the article was the “Wigan reject” tag. This came in the penultimate line with the phrase “From Rob Kiernan to Bruno Alves”. No further comment was made about the ex-Wigan player, but the inference was that Alves is a much better player. In the end I wondered why I had read it.

I noticed one this morning that persuaded me to immediately click on the link. It was near the top of the charts, entitled “Sharpe: Some players need to change their attitude.” I found it hard to believe that the chairman would openly and blatantly criticise his players in public. It just did not fit in with his profile. Did he really say that?

In fact, no quote as such appeared in the article, which was focused on possible changes in playing staff with a new manager coming in. Sharpe was quoted as saying: “You’ll see some movement, no doubt.  I think he wants to get the players back in for pre-season and I think within a couple of weeks he’ll know who he wants out and who he’d love to keep, so that’s his decision.If there’s any players not buying into him and his way of thinking I’m sure they’ll be quickly moved on.”

So it looks like Sharpe never did say that some players need to change their attitude, thank goodness. Wigan Athletic did have a bad season, but most of that was probably more related to mismanagement rather than to lack of effort from the players. But although I was relieved in one sense, reading through what the chairman was quoted as saying was perhaps equally disturbing. Is it a signal that there will be even more upheaval in the playing staff over summer?

A couple of  days earlier, on Paul Cook’s appointment,  Sharpe had been said:  “I think the club but also the squad was the attraction to Paul; it gives him the chance to be at the top end of League One and that will be his aim. The squad is in very good shape; it doesn’t need major surgery but he may want to do a few bits if a couple of players leave but the core of it is very good and that was a big attraction to him.”

Reading between the lines of what Sharpe said, and on the basis of what has happened in the past, it appeared that he was largely willing to keep the squad intact. Two of the club’s most saleable assets – probably Will Grigg and Dan Burn – would be sold off to help balance the books in a season where revenues would not come close to paying a wage bill of players coming down on Championship salaries.

But Sharpe’s latest statements give cause for concern. When is the upheaval at Wigan Athletic going to stop?

The chart above shows that Latics used 41 players last season, indicating more turnover than any other club in the EFL. It mirrors what has been happening for far too long. Instability has eaten away at the foundations of Wigan Athletic Football Club.

Although Sharpe stated that he thought the squad had been attractive to Paul Cook, there is also the other side of the coin. That is of a new manager coming in and wanting to bring in his own players. Will we once again see wholesale changes as we saw in the summer of 2014 under Uwe Rosler, in January 2015 with Malky Mackay, in the summer of 2015 under Gary Caldwell and in January 2016 with Warren Joyce?

Let’s hope not. It is rumoured that the concept of a Director of Football was mooted at Wigan Athletic, but was rejected. One advantage of that position is having someone with an overview on potential turnover at the club. In the absence of such a person are we going to continue with the process of a new manager coming in and breaking up the squad he has inherited?

Gary Caldwell was, to a large degree, forced through economic necessity to release a whole flock of players on lucrative contracts in the summer of 2015. The line-up in the first match at Coventry had just one player – Chris McCann – from the previous season. It took months for the new players to gel and it was only in January that the results started to turn.

If anything, next season’s League 1 looks stronger than it was a couple of years ago. Blackburn Rovers will be buoyed by Venky’s money, Portsmouth maybe even more so if ex-Disney billionaire, Michael Eisner, takes over the club. With three up and four down each year the composition of League 1 varies significantly each season. The map for League 1 in the 2017-18 season reveals a number of clubs strong enough to challenge for promotion and the prospect of derby games against six other clubs in the North West.

Over recent weeks we have seen the departure of Graham Barrow, James Barrow and John Doolan from the coaching and conditioning staff. Only two the players whose contracts were expiring – Jordan Flores and David Perkins – have been offered extensions. Crowd favourite and captain, Stephen Warnock, has left. Garry Cook has come in at board level, Paul Cook and Leam Richardson as manager and assistant.

The question is whether the nucleus of the current squad will be retained over summer. Although Sharpe previously said the squad does not need major surgery has there been a change of mind with the arrival of a new manager?

When will the turnover of players at Wigan slow down?

Let’s hope it will be this summer.

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