Gary Caldwell..... Top bloke. | Vital Football

Gary Caldwell..... Top bloke.

Perhaps the two events are linked. There were many issues and mistakes made that summer, not just dispensing with Sam.

Top bloke perhaps, but that tippy happy shite bored the pants off me and was ineffective at Championship level with the players he had. As I suspected all along he had no intention of changing that style so his dismissal was entirely justified given relegation would have been highly probable. The mistake was hiring that negative clown as his successor.
 
Jeez...nobody’s perfect and everyone makes mistakes, particularly a first-timehead coach in the incredibly high-pressure environment of football management. I admire his willingness to stick with his footballing philosophies, and I think we might well have stayed up had Gary been given a little longer to turn it around.

It was ages ago, think we should just focus now on his immeasurable contributions to Wigan Athletic as both a player and as a manager rather than the perceived negatives.
 
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Lazysid said:
Interesting that he had to point out taking Morsy off against Blackpool to win us the league but doesn't recognise that sending him out to Barnsley on loan contributed to costing him his job and the club relegation.
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Morsy came off because he had been booked as a result of covering the most bizarre back four selection for that match in the memory of man.
 
As far as I'm concerned he got what he deserved.
His tactics in the Championship were atrocious, I remember when we played Sheffield Wednesday at Hillsborough, Grigg scored after 5 minutes, then we spent the next 65 minutes trying (and failing) to park the bus.
We lost 2-1.
The only regret for me was we replaced him with someone who was even worse than he was.
 
Interesting article but i think it illustrates a lot of the flaws in his thinking that lead him to make so many bad decisions.

I don't think he was a good manager, without outspending the rest of L1 so heavily (we spent abput 70% of the leagues combined transfer spending alone and thats not taking into account the wages) i dont think he would've even got us into the play off. I'm sure he's learned some things and would do some stuff differently - but after reading that doesn't make me think he recognises his own faults to the level needed ever become a good manager. The article isnt in depth enough on all the details but it certainly comes accross that he doesn't register many of the issues were of his own making.

For example the Blackpool game he is trying to take credit for his tactical switch when as a previous post mentioned the reality was our bad start was down to his poor decision making. We were playing a dead on their feet side knowing a win would take us up but we put out a very negative formation (5 at the back with 3 defensive midfielders) that never worked all season and always had to be switched to get results. And a nonsensical team selection (with 2 of our best players on the bench and our best attacking centre mid at left back and our 2 full backs at centre half). We easily could've been losing that game, they missed some sitters and if i remember correctly Daniels was lucky not to have been sent off for being the last man before Caldwell switched to the tactics and team everyonewanted him to start with.

I felt Caldwell always want to do something unusual to prove he was clever rather than doing the most logical and straight forward ideas. The season was characterised by often starting with his prefered negative tactics, wrong formations and team selections and struggling and often falling behind before changing to what we should've started with in the first place and smashing teams to claim last gasp turn arounds. As a fan it was exciting to do all the comebacks but it was so often recovering from needlessly self inflicted issues. It seemed he was incapable of learning no matter how many times we did that same routine - he was determined to keep going back to his original idea when he had a better alternative.

I was glad he was sacked as i was certain he was taking us down. The issue was the 2 managers who replaced him that season were no better if not worse. I just wish we would've taken a chance on Paul Cook back then if he was already on our radar as i think he'd have kept us up.

The difference between Caldwell and Cook is night and day and shows how lucky we are to have our current manager.

I'm sure Gary is a nice guy who loves the club and i wish him well if he gets another job, but I'm delighted the rumours about a Caldwell return last summer came to nothing.
 
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Sammyspringfield said:
Morsy came off because he had been booked as a result of covering the most bizarre back four selection for that match in the memory of man.
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Not one player was booked in that game, Morsy was having a stinker, as well as a few others, but Caldwell claiming taking him off changed the game is also B/S we were getting opened up constantly by a Blackpool central midfielder, for some bizarre reason Blackpool chose to substitute him and that is when we got control of the game, Mc Canns opening goal was against the run of play, Wildschuts first broke them, the rest is history.

The back four was actually a back five with McCann stepping into midfield at times, we had used this line up for much of the season with the exception of Pierce who was carrying a knock and only on the subs bench.
 

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king_dezeeuw06 said:
Interesting article but i think it illustrates a lot of the flaws in his thinking that lead him to make so many bad decisions.

I don't think he was a good manager, without outspending the rest of L1 so heavily (we spent abput 70% of the leagues combined transfer spending alone and thats not taking into account the wages) i dont think he would've even got us into the play off. I'm sure he's learned some things and would do some stuff differently - but after reading that doesn't make me think he recognises his own faults to the level needed ever become a good manager. The article isnt in depth enough on all the details but it certainly comes accross that he doesn't register many of the issues were of his own making.
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The large spending was forced on him by circumstances rather than his desire to spend, spend, spend.
There was a need for a complete clear out of players brought in by 4 different managers in 3 years as the squad was totally disjointed and demoralised.
Plus there was a need to clear away the higher earners to balance the books.
Caldwell was unfortunate that he had to do this and had a team that needed to gel due to the number of new faces.
Yes his tactics were a bit naive at times but he was a new manager and so needed to learn. For him personally he would have been better off starting his managerial career in L2 then working his way up.
I still think we would have survived in the championship if we had not sacked him, but I also think we are much better off with Cook as Manager
 
The reality is anyone with basic football and squad player knowledge would have got us up from L1 that year. The following year exposed huge issues with both Caldwell and Joyce not to mention those who appointed them both !
 
loudmouthblue said:
Not one player was booked in that game.
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I am pretty sure Morsy was booked, i remember because he was already on a yellow and then had a bit of a swipe at someone that could've been a red / second yellow and thinking 'that was a let off'. It might not be down on the match report but i think that they must have missed it by mistake much like last season when the match report and all the stats sites said he was on 9 yellows when he had just hit 10 and trigger a suspension that made him miss City. It does appear that everyone just copies each other so if one site makes a mistake they all repeat it.
 
Kenny Morris said:
The large spending was forced on him by circumstances rather than his desire to spend, spend, spend.
There was a need for a complete clear out of players brought in by 4 different managers in 3 years as the squad was totally disjointed and demoralised.
Plus there was a need to clear away the higher earners to balance the books.
Caldwell was unfortunate that he had to do this and had a team that needed to gel due to the number of new faces.
Yes his tactics were a bit naive at times but he was a new manager and so needed to learn. For him personally he would have been better off starting his managerial career in L2 then working his way up.
I still think we would have survived in the championship if we had not sacked him, but I also think we are much better off with Cook as Manager
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I'm not suggesting Caldwell didn't have to replenish his squad and his hand wasn't forced into recruiting on mass by the need to cut the wage bill but he was afforded a much larger budget than anyone else by miles with only Sheffield having a similary large wage bill but only had 500k transfer budget compared to our 4m or so. We had players sitting in the stand that would've probably gotten into other L1 teams starting 11's. Yet even with that level of advantage we were so often approaching games very negatively and only really attacking teams when we were already trailing. The tactics often seemed to be everyone behind the ball and then give the ball to Yanic and Jacobs and hope they dribble through the opposition and then score or tee up Grigg.

In the Championship when we no longer had that financial advantage to bring in superiour players to the opposition and he needed to use his managerial skills to get results and he was totally exposed (Powell at defensive midfield, Yanic at full back, shipping out Morsy and Pearce, trying to play out from the back without having any method to do so like the double pivot we use now etc). I can't see how his style of play would've yielded goals later in the season to keep us up. I think if he started in L2 without the big budget he'd have not lasted 6 months.
 
He's got a lot of plaudits from his ex players KDZ. Some of them specifically mentioned his tactical awareness, and how they enjoyed playing for him. Must be something in that.

I reckon we'd have stayed up easily if Sharpey hadn't got cold feet. That said, it led us to getting Cookie, and another great (enjoyable) season in League, so every cloud etc.
 
loudmouthblue said:
So in your opinion caldwell was wrong and so are the published stats, how am I not surprised.
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I remember Morsy being booked, sammy remembers the same - does anyone else on here also remembers it? I vaguely remember it being discussed after the game too, so i'm certainly not the only person who thinks he was booked. An explanation could be the referee flashed a card in Morsys direction to a Blackpool player after the foul by Morsy maybe for disent and it looked like it was for Samys foul. But i think it's just as likely that the stat accidentally missed it.

Caldwell didn't say if Morsy was booked or not did he?

On top of the specific example of when the stats were wrong this season, there was a second when Dan Burn picked up his 5th booking against Doncaster than ruled him out of the Rotherham game - all of the websites except the FA suspension list had that down as his 4th yellow. So yes the stats have been wrong in the past and i think this could be one of them.

It's a minor point with probably no way of proving either way but I'm certain a yellow card was flashed in Morsys general direction after a foul he made.
 
moonay said:
He's got a lot of plaudits from his ex players KDZ. Some of them specifically mentioned his tactical awareness, and how they enjoyed playing for him. Must be something in that.

I reckon we'd have stayed up easily if Sharpey hadn't got cold feet. That said, it led us to getting Cookie, and another great (enjoyable) season in League, so every cloud etc.
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Alex Ferguson said Warren Joyce would be a good manager and you'd think if anyone could spot a good manager it would be him. There's no doubting that Caldwell was popular, as was Barrow but think when people who like you personally say positive things it's a bit like when someone who doesn't like you says something negative - it may not be a fair reflection due to confirmation bias. I think the proof isn't in what the players say but what we see on the pitch and i think there was a lot of evidence to massively offset the players judgement.

I don't understand personally what anyone saw in Caldwell's tactics, system, approach, decision making, etc that made them think it would yeild the significant improvement needed to generate the points needed. Although i'd agree we were worse under Joyce - but i think we saw enough to say neither of them were right.

Anyway we've had the Caldwell debate many times and there's no way anyone will change their mind on him being any good or not if they haven't already. There's no way to prove it either way for certain, we'll just have to agree to disagree on that one. But i think we can all agree Cook is wonderful and things are far better now than they were.
 
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