Wigan Athletic: David Sharpe promise failed after just four months | OneFootball

Wigan Athletic: David Sharpe promised that Warren Joyce would bring a long-term vision to the club, but he lasted just four months

Wigan Athletic's last EFL Trophy group game saw them welcome the Nottingham Forest Under-21 side, and the Latics progressed to the knockout stages via a penalty shoot-out victory.

While the win for Shaun Maloney's men got them one step closer to a potential Wembley trip, the away dugout boasted a figure who the Brick Community Stadium faithful would rather forget.

Warren Joyce is the head coach of the Forest Under-21s, and while the Premier League outfit may deem themselves lucky to have a former Manchester United academy boss among their ranks, Latics supporters will not view his past exploits too kindly.

Former Tics chairman David Sharpe made the decision to appoint Joyce as manager in November 2016, following the sacking of Gary Caldwell, who had led the Greater Manchester outfit to the League One title the previous season.

While the Latics sat 23rd in the Championship table, having played 14 matches, many Wigan fans found it tough to bid an abrupt goodbye to a manager who had captained the club as a player during their Premier League days.

Sharpe's Joyce promise did not come true

When Sharpe appointed Joyce to the dugout at the Brick Community Stadium, he said: "Warren has everything we are looking for.

"He is an exceptional coach who has a reputation within the game for being among the very best at bringing through young players, as his record at Manchester United shows.

"But more than that, he has a winning mentality which transmits to his players, and he has achieved great success in his time at United.

"It’s the perfect combination.

"Warren has had several high profile opportunities but wants to move back into management, and it is a measure of how highly we rate him that we are making such a long-term commitment.

"From the moment we met, it was clear that there was a connection.

"He is a highly professional, focused and ambitious person, and we share the same views regarding the long-term vision for the club.

"He comes highly recommended, and I am confident that we are appointing an excellent manager."

But despite these words of heavy praise from Sharpe, what actually unfolded under Joyce was a grim chapter in the Latics' history, under a boss who was clearly out of his depth at Championship level.

The Latics finished the 2016/17 season 23rd in the second tier, with only Rotherham United enduring a more woeful campaign, and were relegated straight back to League One just one year after winning promotion.

Despite initially speaking of Joyce's promising long-term vision for the club, Sharpe made the decision to sack the former Man United academy manager just four months after appointing him.

While the Tics were four points adrift of safety with just nine Championship games left to play, the manager's sacking may still have come as a surprise, due to the fact that the club had heavily backed him during the 2017 January transfer window, and signed no fewer than eight players on deadline day.

After sacking Joyce, Sharpe said: "It is unfortunate that we have made this decision but with the team in such a perilous position in the league, we need to act now because we cannot afford to fall any further behind.

"Warren was appointed with the future in mind in terms of developing players, but preserving our Championship status is the absolute priority, and we have a duty to do whatever gives us the best chance of doing that.

"Results and performances have simply not been up to standard often enough in recent matches, and although we acknowledge the difficulties faced in managing a team in a league where we are competing against clubs with much larger budgets, the nature of some of our recent defeats, especially against close rivals, has fallen short in terms of what we as a club, and all our supporters, expect."

Graham Barrow took interim charge of the Latics for the rest of the campaign, but the damage had already been done, and supporters will blame Joyce's failed tenure for their relegation that season.

Joyce's Aston Villa comments epitomised negative Latics era

While the main reason Latics supporters will look back at Joyce's spell as manager with bitterness is due to the fact that he was largely responsible for relegation, many will hold bad memories of the negative style of football he brought to the table.

Perhaps the Greater Manchester side's lack of attacking intent under the former Man United academy boss were epitomised by his comments following a Championship loss to a then struggling Aston Villa in December 2016.

After a 1-0 defeat, which came as a result of a late Jack Grealish winner, he said: "If you look at it, we only lost one point at Villa, because on 88 minutes we’d only got one point.

"Single points add up over the course of a season, but the reality is it’s just one point.

"It’s not all doom and gloom, it’s one point, in a tough game, against a massive club."

These comments infer that Joyce did not believe his side were capable of going on and grabbing a late winner themselves at Villa Park, which summarises just how painful his style of football was for supporters to watch, and really brings Sharpe's choice to appoint the boss in the first place into serious question.