Richie Wellens at Salford City
EFL • non- LEAGUE • SCOTLAND
The ex- Blackpool and Leicester midfielder is aiming to steer Salford to a fifth promotion in seven seasons, having led Swindon to League Two glory in 2019- 20
What attracted you to swap Swindon for Salford in November? How much have things changed since you were a player there?
I joined Salford for a very brief spell at the end of my career [ in the National League North] – I still loved it, but my legs were gone. It wasn’t a great time, to be honest! You can see how much the club has changed: the ground has improved a lot and things have moved quickly. Now we need to keep up with what’s happening on the pitch – our training ground needs some work, as does our pitch. We’ve had quite a few postponements this season. The club has maybe won too many promotions in recent seasons, but that’s also the biggest attraction about Salford – it’s a club with no ceiling.
How hard have you found it to handle everything this season?
For the players, not having a normal pre- season was tough. Even before I got here, the break from February to starting up again [ in August] was hard for everybody. The protocols around training aren’t ideal: players have to come in changed to go, leave like that, can’t eat together – it’s really difficult to socialise with one another. We had a psychologist come in one day who did character referencing – finding out which groups each player fitted into, to give me an idea of what motivates them. But it’s a real challenge to build relationships with players, which I feel is one of my strong points. The defeats are worse with no fans right now, too. We go through a lot of energy- sapping stuff during the week, and the rewards for managers are going out there on a Saturday with that feeling of support from the fans who can see your work. You thrive on the feeling you get from doing it for them – but at the moment, we’re not getting that.
How unusual has it been preparing for a delayed Football League Trophy final that you and a lot of your team didn’t play any part in getting to?
I do feel like an imposter, to be honest – it’s almost been a bit of a distraction. If there were 40,000 Portsmouth fans going to Wembley along with our own, I’d have been really looking forward to it as a spectacle. For players in League One and Two, though, chances to play at Wembley are few and far between, so it’s a massive opportunity for them.
“PLAYERS OUT OF THE TEAM LIKED SVEN AS MUCH AS THOSE IN IT – THAT’S PRETTY RARE”
The players and the gaffer – Graham Alexander – who got them there last season need to take all the credit for reaching the final.
You’ve been a manager for almost four years. How are you different to when you initially stepped into the breach at Oldham?
Massively. A lot of players nearing the end of their career will say, ‘ The next step for me is coaching’ – but you don’t always make that transition properly because you think you know the game. It’s a very difficult job, though, and I’d advise any player to ask questions and make sure they listen to people.
What did you learn from your stint at Boundary Park?
People label me with the relegation [ in 2018], but I find that hard to take. If you look at my points per game there, they’d have been a mid- table result. When I took over they were bottom of League One, couldn’t score, and had been beaten 5- 1 at Rotherham. There was a takeover going on around the New Year and, to be honest, the club was in utter disarray – so many people pulling in different directions. Players were arriving on trial or signing deals who we’d never heard of or done any research on, and it just escalated. I did
make some errors out of stubbornness, though, which I now view as a learning curve. [ FFT: Such as?] I was being told to play certain players, and decided not to. Perhaps in certain situations they should have come on, but I purposely left them out. That was me being quite young and naive as a boss, biting my nose off to spite my face. Paul Scholes later found out what it was like there.
What do you now appreciate about management that you didn’t during your playing career?
I remember Nigel Pearson experiencing a really tough time at Leicester once, and I wish I knew what he was going through – because it must have been hard. To get through all that and then have the success he did at the club was amazing. Sometimes you think about other managers who have been at the top for years and wonder, ‘ How did you actually do that?’ It’s such a 24/ 7 job – because if you’re not thinking about it regularly, you’re not doing it properly.
Which of your former managers’ best qualities did you most admire?
The top three bosses of my career are Sean O’driscoll tactically, Sven- Goran Eriksson as a man manager, and Nigel Pearson as the most well- rounded. [ FFT: What was so good about Sven?] He was a great man who understood players’ personalities and treated them differently if they needed it. The players out of the team actually liked him as much as those in it – that’s pretty rare.
How important was it for you to get that first bit of silverware as a boss at Swindon, winning the League Two title last season?
Leaving Oldham was possibly the best thing to happen to me, as [ Swindon’s director of football] Paul Jewell rang me a few months later and I couldn’t have joined a better club. It gave me belief in what I could do – I took over a team in 17th, and while we weren’t quite good enough to sneak into the play- offs, we had a go. We had several players out of contract that summer, so I had the chance to have my own pre- season and recruit who I wanted. The chairman, Lee Power, said, ‘ There’s your budget, spend it how you want’. It was brilliant. We won at Scunthorpe on the opening day, and straight away you got the feeling we could do well.
Salford are eyeing more success this campaign – how confident are you?
Very – so far we’ve just been doing OK and haven’t quite hit top form. We lost to Oldham, but that was the first time I looked at us and said, ‘ We’re a proper team’. Even though you’re upset with a loss, it gave me belief in the squad. If we can build a run, which I think we’re capable of, then we’ve got a chance.