Time for action,Callum

FORGET ALL THE GRUDGES – AND PROVE WORTH

TO TONY Pulis, Callum McManaman was a stain on his managerial CV, an expensive flop who failed to pull his weight at The Hawthorns.

To Callum McManaman, Tony Pulis is a pitiless tyrant who stunted his development and pulverised his Premier League dreams.

Neither would say so, of course, but it didn’t take Hercule Poirot to decode the final, frenzied minutes of Sunderland 3-3 draw with Middlesbrough last weekend.

McManaman, 26, celebrated his late leveller by making an angry beeline for the man who froze him out at West Brom.

Pulis, who paid Wigan £4.75m to make McManaman his first signing as Baggies boss in January 2015, offered a pithy riposte.

“I understand why he is frustrated,” deadpanned the 60-year-old. “He was at West Brom and I never picked him. He went on loan to Sheffield Wednesday and they didn’t pick him. Now he is at Sunderland and they don’t pick him!”

Ooh, Tony. Put those claws away. Now the pantomime is over, however, we are left with a serious question. Does Pulis have a point? Or was McManaman harshly treated?

Factually, that Pulis broadside hit the bullseye. Since departing the DW, McManaman has worked under four different managers – Pulis, Carlos Carvalhal during last season’s loan at Sheffield Wednesday, Simon Grayson, who signed him for Sunderland in August, and now Chris Coleman.

Not a single one trusted him to complete 90 minutes. Of his 56 appearances, 37 came from the bench. Two were for Under-23 sides. In the other 17, he got the hook. The last time McManaman started and finished a game was late 2014.

Yet this is a player who, in May 2013, ripped Manchester City to shreds as Wigan clinched a famous FA Cup.

He tortured the experienced Pablo Zabaleta so relentlessly that the Argentine was sent off for one frustrated hack too many.

Invention

Despite being the secondyoungest player on the park, he was the fulcrum of Wigan’s game plan, his pace and invention in one-v-one situations identified by Roberto Martinez as too hot for City to handle.

“I don’t really have to say much more about Callum,” said the Spaniard, raindrenched and beaming.

“Actions always speak louder than words and today his were deafening. He is a real diamond of English football and what a moment to show the world what a player he is.”

As Everton fans will attest, Martinez and florid optimism go together like Gareth Barry and a referee’s notebook, yet he was far from the only person wowed by McManaman that day.

“On this form,” wrote Daniel Taylor of The

Guardian, “the 22-year-old must have an outstanding chance of going to the European Under-21 Championship, if not being catapulted into Roy Hodgson's England squad.”

Was McManaman really that good? The answer is yes – but only sometimes. As Wigan fans know better than anyone, the scouser is either scintillating or stinking.

Some days, he’ll skin fullbacks for fun. Some days, he’ll get wound up, lose concentration and spend more time in cul-de-sacs than the cast of Neighbours.

McManaman is a throwback, a poor man’s David Ginola in the age of James Milner.

Martinez, a diehard aesthete and one of the most indulgent managers around, was willing to accept the bad days in exchange for occasional explosions of brilliance. Pulis, a stickler for discipline who’d parted with nearly £5m, was not. Since then, McManaman’s form and confidence - like any lightly-run player - has nosedived, ensuring more bad days than good. Carvalhal, chasing a playoff spot, and Grayson, battling relegation, dared not nurse him back to form. In that sense, at least, Pulis’ post-match dig is a little below the belt. Nevertheless, blame lies with both parties. Pulis did not do his research, something he effectively admitted in May last year.

Expected

“It’s one of those where you hold your hand up and say ‘I might have made a mistake in respect of what I expected of him and what I got from him’,” he said. McManaman (and by definition his advisers) showed a lack of foresight – firstly, in signing for a manager so famously wedded to tactical discipline and, secondly, in failing to sacrifice his natural instincts to win a place in the side. Bawling at Pulis was no doubt cathartic but, for McManaman, it is time to forget grudges, forget the lost years and start deafening people with his football again. As Martinez said all those years ago, actions speak louder than words.