Owen Coyle admits he shouldn’t have joined Wigan

OWEN COYLE has admitted he was wrong to take the Wigan job last season, while revealing he had “blazing arguments” with chairman Dave Whelan during his short tenure.

Coyle was at the DW Stadium less than six months. Picture: SNS

Former Burnley, Bolton and Latics boss Coyle is currently out of work after departing the DW Stadium last December less than six months into the job following three successive home losses.

The Scot claims he was at loggerheads with Whelan from the moment he was hired in June and has stressed he will be selective over the next chairman he works for.

“I didn’t get on with the chairman from day one, truth be told, so I never actually signed my contract when I went there,” Coyle told various Scottish newspapers.

“Having had that experience, what’s important now is I get the feeling I’ll be working with good people again.

“I’ve turned four or five things down in the past four or five months already. That’s not a snobbery thing - I just have to get the right feeling from the right person.”

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Coyle went on to lift the lid on his relationship with Whelan, who is currently the subject of an FA charge relating to comments he made concerning Chinese and Jewish people.

Coyle added: “It’s important I take the right job and work with the right people. I don’t have any regrets as such but I shouldn’t have taken the Wigan job when I did.

“I’ve not got any issue with being forgotten. Wherever I’ve been we’ve done very well. We never left Wigan for football reasons.

“We were three points off the play-offs with a game in hand, brought in £19 million, spent £4.5 million and were a game away from reaching the knockout stage of the Europa League, the only second-tier team in the competition.

“We left Wigan because the chairman and I never saw eye to eye. We had a couple of blazing arguments and I told him what I thought. So that’s the real reason why we left.”

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