NOW I’M COMING OFF THE CANVAS
Caldwell was left on the ropes after being shown the door by Wigan but opportunity knocks at Chesterfield
IT’S only 48 hours after relegation was confirmed and Gary Caldwell is already taking the first steps aimed at dragging his Chesterfield squad back in the right direction. His beaten players are gathered in the meeting room at the Proact Stadium watching a DVD preaching on reaction to adversity. The voiceover is pinched by Caldwell from a short film used by Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll to inspire his players from the most crushing of setbacks — a last-second Superbowl defeat to the New England Patriots. The footage, however, is from the far less glamorous League One. There are many season lowlights but the message is clear: I’m coming back. And I’ll be stronger and better for it. And it starts today.
Caldwell used similarly cute psychology exactly two years ago. He was appointed all too late — with five games left — to prevent Wigan slumping out of the Championship. The comeback began with a motivational video in the aftermath of relegation and was complete 12 months later when Caldwell’s side stormed to the League One title.
Recovering from a hardship is a trait at which Caldwell believes he is well equipped to pass on to players in his budding managerial career. The former Celtic and Scotland defender trusts that mentality served him sufficiently to make the most of his playing talent. And he feels he excelled, with a little help from his friends, when his first job was brutally ended barely six months after that DW Stadium promotion party.
Wigan chairman Dave Sharpe — grandson of Dave Whelan — swung the axe in October, only 14 matches into the season. The youngest chairman in the division and the man he appointed as a 32-year-old were supposed to be helping each other find their way in their respective games. So much for that plan as soon as the going got tough.
Firing Caldwell did nothing to stop Wigan remaining in relegation trouble. Sharpe sacked former Manchester United reserve-team manager and Caldwell’s replacement, Warren Joyce, last month following a disastrous spell in charge. While the club toiled to drag themselves away from trouble with the team he constructed, Caldwell admits he had a rebuilding job on himself to do.
‘I talked to managers and others, you need to deal with it and process it,’ said Caldwell.
‘I went back in to see the players because I had a lot of texts saying how gutted they were. I wanted to go back in and thank them because I had a great relationship and some great times with them.
‘Then I spent the afternoon with Roberto Martinez. He was back from Belgium in his house, just 10 minutes from Wigan and he said pop in on the way home. Three hours just talking football, different things and he gave me advice, how to look back and analyse the games and different decisions I’d made.
‘Roberto is always someone I speak to now and again, along with Gordon Strachan. Once you start talking football with Roberto you’re there a long time. It was a helpful afternoon. The psychologist I had at Wigan, Lee Richardson, was fantastic when he was at the club with us and he’s someone I still speak to and get on really well with.
‘He said it’s like a death in the family. You really have a void that is difficult to replace and you’re not going to replace it straight away. You have to kind of find a motivation and get into something. But for a few weeks, I was pretty demotivated to do anything. Demotivated to watch football. Demotivation is not great for me. It was strange because you go from 100mph and 100-per-cent motivation to then having nothing to get you going. You don’t have a game to prepare for, don’t have training, don’t need to watch a player, no reason to do anything, which I found hard.
‘It was the first time I was waking up with nothing to really do. I spoke to a lot of people who said you need to deal with it and focus on looking back and realising what was good, what you could have done better and come back stronger, which I think I did.’
Caldwell didn’t do a great deal wrong. Only two wins in the Championship but each of the seven defeats was by one goal. This was not an operation cracking at the seams on its step up a level. ‘I was there for 18 months and won a league, so a lot of what we did was very good and I took more positives than negatives from it,’ Caldwell concluded. ‘It was a massive disappointment not just losing your job but because it felt like my club.
‘It was the longest period I’d spent anywhere as a player and the connection
I had with people there made it harder. I knew results weren’t what I wanted them to be. But what I did know was the process we were going through. Performances the players gave on match days and on a daily basis showed this wasn’t a changing room that had given up on the manager.
‘This wasn’t staff unsure of the manager’s methods. It came as a shock, yes, but I don’t think in modern-day football you can ever expect time.
‘Owners and clubs have that right and when it happens you have to accept it and move on.’
Caldwell moved on to Chesterfield in January, replacing Danny Wilson, but was unable to lift them out of the relegation zone. A yo-yo club between the bottom two tiers in recent seasons, Caldwell feels comfortable with the task of ripping up and starting again with ripping up and the help of Guy Branston — his appointment five weeks ago to head a recruitment drive.
‘The good thing is I've been in this position before, building a team to win a league and get promotion,’ he said. ‘I now feel very confident what the club needs to go through and I can be the guy to do that.
‘In general, when you lose games it becomes a culture. The place can become quite negative. I have to change that. Changing personnel helps that process.
‘So we’ll be signing around 15 this summer, maybe more. That's going to create a huge change in the dressing-room dynamic, how the team functions. That is a blank canvas to go and coach them and play the style of football I
It’s like a death in the family. You’ve a void that is hard to replace and you’re not going to replace it straight away
choose. I think back to when I got the Wigan job — April 9, 2015 — to me now, and it’s a totally different person. I still need support, but I’m much more in control of training sessions, organising the team, dealing with a 90 minutes where I can see things and change things.
‘I’m a better coach, better at man-management, my work takes a lot less time. Every day of those two years I felt I’ve learned something — even when I was out of work.’
Once Caldwell has recovered from having both his hips done this close season, those players can expect a more active coach on the training pitch.
‘Now is a down moment,’ he said. ‘You have them. You have to get off the canvas, stand up and fight. If you don’t then you just crawl away and you won’t be seen in football. I’ve always been someone to come out fighting.
‘Football is full of setbacks. You have more lows than highs. How you recover, how you take a positive from it and come back stronger, for me, is what gives you a chance to have success. If you don’t, you won’t have a career.
‘The number of times you go home and think: My career is over. In your early 20s because you’ve had a bad game. You have to get yourself out of that and do something about it. I see this as a chance to get promotion, bring the club back up and try to establish them as a League One club with potential to go even higher.’