Gilks keeping an eye on manager market!

Only Gilks is keeping his fingers crossed that it’s not someone he’s managed to upset at a previous employer!

“It does cross your mind, if you’ve fallen out with a certain manager at some stage of your career, wherever you’ve been!” Gilks told the Wigan Post. “But it is a strange one, whenever this happens.

“As far as you’re concerned as a player, you’re happy at the club, and you’re hoping to impress the new manager when he comes in.

“It’s your job to impress him, and to not give him an opportunity to not like you or not put you in the team.

“It’s a clean slate for everybody at the football club, and the lads should be looking at it as a positive they can show the new man what they can do.

“It’s down to yourself as a player at the end of the day. If you’re happy to be at this football club, you’ll be happy to work for whichever manager comes in.

“To be honest, you see a lot of your old managers around, and you say hello to them and that. Certain things happen in football, that not everybody agrees on, but that’s just the nature of the game.

“There’s never a real hatred that – at least not on my part!”

It’s understood Steve McClaren is no longer in the running for the managerial vacancy, having been backed into odds-on with some bookmakers.

The former England boss is believed to have held talks with the club, but both parties are now looking in other directions.

Former Latics midfielder Paul Cook - who has just led Portsmouth to the League Two title - has regained odds-on favouritism for the job.

Luton boss Nathan Jones, Oxford manager Michael Appleton and the out-of-work Alan Stubbs are also thought to be on the shortlist, along with ex-Latics boss Uwe Rosler.

However, fellow Latics old-boy Gary Caldwell appears to have fallen out of the reckoning.