How Shaun Maloney rebuilt Wigan Athletic

“Every day, for three weeks, I expected to come in and the gates to be locked,” says Wigan Athletic manager Shaun Maloney. “This time there wasn’t a choice of administration. It was that perilous.”

Maloney is not the type to get too high in triumph or dwell on defeats but, this summer, the pain of previous months still cut deep. “I’m getting emotional here,” he murmurs.

It is no wonder Maloney is feeling slightly overwhelmed. He has had to battle through relegation, players and staff going unpaid, a winding-up order, a transfer embargo and an eight-point deduction at the start of this season that Wigan wiped clear after just four games.

A 4-0 thrashing of local rivals Bolton Wanderers inflated expectations, only for back-to-back defeats to Barnsley and Blackpool to deliver a dose of realism. The fact is this season, with so many changes and continued budget-cutting, is going to be tough and Maloney is not afraid to admit it. He is just thankful that local billionaire Mike Danson bought the club in June, just when they were teetering on the precipice.

Captain Callum Lang played every minute of Wigan’s first six games (Pete Norton/Getty Images)

The previous owner, Phoenix 2021 Limited from Bahrain, was no longer putting money into the club; the board had resigned; the interim CEO had left. At the training ground, Maloney and various heads of departments turned up each day focused on nothing other than trying to stop Wigan from going out of business. No wonder the wounds still smart.

The practice facility at Wigan is modest, but what it lacks in glitz, it makes up for in charm. The tea lady is welcoming, catering staff chat to players both young and old and there’s a palpable buzz as the club confronts its new era.

On the walls are reminders of better times. The promotion years, the eight-year stint in the Premier League and, of course, the FA Cup win in 2013 over Manchester City, a game Maloney started. “Ben Watson (who scored the winner at Wembley) is everywhere,” Maloney laughs.

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The club’s plan is to adorn the facility with quotes from heroes of the past — figures such as Paul Jewell, the manager who delivered Premier League football to this small town in England’s north west, along with playing alumni Nathan Ellington and Antonio Valencia.

For now, though, the words “unity is strength” tower over the players as they eat in the canteen.

Maloney is so busy jumping between training sessions, opposition analysis and recruitment meetings that he’s the last to eat when we meet. Five minutes is all the 40-year-old needs as he chuckles when I ask if he’s overworked.

“I occasionally take a Sunday off,” he responds. Family time with his son, Jude, is important, but so is his career and though the last seven months have been intense, he wouldn’t want it any other way.

Maloney arrived at Wigan on January 28, three days before the transfer window closed and with the club rooted to the foot of the Championship after a dreadful run of results under Kolo Toure, which cost the former Manchester City defender his job after 59 days in charge.

Wigan endured a miserable 2022-23 season (George Wood/Getty Images)

He agreed to avoid signing players for a transfer fee in the winter window because money was tight, yet it was only when the deadline passed that the severity of the troubles came to light.

“I asked for information around the first-team squad, the finances and the budget and that was when I started to realise we had some problems,” he says.

On the pitch, Wigan’s form picked up as Maloney took 20 points from the remaining 18 games. They stopped conceding (their defensive record over the rest of the season was the fifth-best in the Championship, having previously been the worst), but it was too late to avoid relegation.

By that point, the former owner, Abdulrahman Al Jasmi, and his son-in-law and chairman, Talal Al Hammad, had checked out after a season where the players had failed to be paid on five occasions and the club had been docked three points. Two further four-point deductions were carried into 2023-24.

But things were about to get worse: on June 12, the club faced a winding-up order over unpaid taxes from HRMC, having already been placed under a transfer embargo by the English Football League. Despite all the ups and downs over the previous decade, including one period in administration, this had the potential to be the final blow — until Danson stepped in.

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“The losses were enormous,” Maloney says. “The finances had just completely run out of control. I had to show that we could run the club in a very different way, so when we presented (to Danson) it was about showing how we can go down a completely different path.”

Which brings us to today.

Maloney decided to give young players with the right attitude the platform to kickstart their career: one of them, goalkeeper Sam Tickle, a 21-year-old academy graduate, received his first England Under-21s call-up this week after doing just that.

Centre-half Charlie Hughes, 19, and attacker Baba Adeeko, 20, are others on the rise, and loanees James Balagizi (from Liverpool) and Liam Morrison (Bayern Munich) are expected to feature heavily as the season progresses.

Wigan had the joint-oldest squad in the Championship last season and spent close to £18million ($22.5m) on wages, but they have dramatically reduced that figure — it is now less than half of the £8million they paid when they were last in League One.

“The model was to strip everything back and then we had to be brave with our academy,” Maloney says. “I felt the younger players could get to a certain level to help us stay in this league and maybe even then get us out of this league while also creating some value.

“There used to be a DNA at this club where we had a certain style of play that was successful for a club of our size and by showcasing young players’ talent, we were enjoyable to watch but also able to compete with teams on bigger budgets.

“I made a decision that I was going to do that this season and I’m not going to take a step back, whether we lose the next five or whether we win the next five.”

Shaun Maloney has kept his backroom staff small in number (Pete Norton/Getty Images)

Wigan do not have a scouting team, so talent identification is down to Maloney and the new sporting director, Gregor Rioch, who was recently promoted from his role as academy manager.

Danson, who founded GlobalDataPLC and has a stake in the Wigan Warriors rugby league team, has introduced staff to sports data company Prospect Sporting Insights, which has worked with England Rugby and will assist with squad planning. The idea is to work alongside Maloney and Rioch when planning for the future but also remain relevant to the objectives and vision of the club.

EFL rules prevent Wigan from signing players with transfer fees until next summer, so Maloney and Rioch had to get creative. They signed versatile players either on free deals or on loan to cover a variety of positions and then improved the medical and sports science operation to help prevent injuries.

“We don’t have a massive staff but we’ve got a head of sports science and a head of strength and conditioning, who are at a really high level,” Maloney says. “It’s quality over quantity.”

Part-time help is also called on early in the week to aid recovery and when the schedule really gets busy in November, there are funds set aside for additional staffing support.

“We’re really aware of the timing of training, certain distances and speeds in drills, and we use data to keep us aware of when soft tissue injuries are more likely,” Maloney explains.

“There will be times when I have to cut down training just to limit the chances of missing players but if I have to push the players through anything, it will be tactically.”

Maloney experienced an elite environment when he was the first-team coach under Roberto Martinez for Belgium’s national team, but he was not put off by adopting a more thrifty approach at Wigan, even if moving on staff to cut costs over the summer was “tough”.

This is not his first taste of management at the sharp end. His first managerial job was at Scottish Premiership side Hibernian, a challenging spell that only lasted four months before he was sacked in April 2022.

Shaun Maloney struggled at Hibernian (Ian MacNicol/Getty Images)

A five-week trip to Spain during his time off certainly helped. He spent time watching Barcelona train and discussed tactics with manager Xavi in preparation for a new role.

One particular training session from Michel, the Girona manager, also stood out. “For an hour and 20 minutes, he worked solely on defensive work covering every area of the pitch and the following weekend, they held Real Madrid. It was really good to see different methods.”

Inside Maloney’s office, a revamped portable cabin that used to be an out-of-date, rarely used games room for the players, the slogan #Believe covers one wall.

Across the road at the stadium, the words “no excuses” line the dressing room — an important reminder for his players, Maloney says.

There was a time over the summer when the groundsman had to siphon diesel from empty containers just to be in a position to keep the practice pitches in good condition.

“We were done, we had no money, but then after the takeover we had to make a choice. That means living within your means because we’re a League One club.

“It’s a case of no excuses. We all need to respect the history of the club and set really high standards. We have to be ready to sacrifice or suffer more than others.”

It remains to be seen how competitive Wigan will be in this season’s wide-open League One, but if that message about striving for perfection hits home, their future looks a lot brighter than their recent past.

(Top photo: Gareth Copley/Getty Images)

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