Business as usual - Caldwell

The 4-1 victory over Southend means only a minor miracle can prevent Latics regaining their Championship status at the first time of asking.

While the players and fans were quick to celebrate after the game, Caldwell does not feel the job is even remotely close to being done, with the League One title still up for grabs.

“As a manager I don’t think you can ever consider the job to be done,” he told the Evening Post.

“It feels different to when I was a player. As a player I would have been in the dressing room after the game, dancing about probably.

“But as a manager, I can’t do that – I have to continually take the club forward and try to challenge the players and give them the tools to improve.

“For me, it’s just about improving, and I don’t think I will ever celebrate as much as I did – because the next game, the next win, the next year, the next title is always more important.”

Promotion will be mathematically sealed if Walsall fail to beat Shrewsbury in their game in hand tomorrow night.

But Caldwell is not losing any sleep about events elsewhere, and merely called on his players to stay focused for the next fortnight.

“It has to be business as usual – it has to be,” the Latics boss acknowledged.

“The focus will be on improvement, which it has been all season. We obviously put a new group together, and we had to work very hard on the training ground to get ideas across and understanding within the new partnerships in the team.

“That’s taken time, and we have to keep building that, we have to keep improving.

“I think there is so much potential within this group of players – they can go to whatever level they want.

“But they have to be prepared to work very hard to do that. We’ll keep focused for two more weeks, and then they can go and enjoy themselves after that.”