Caldwell says players need to 'wake up'

A furious Gary Caldwell slammed his Wigan Athletic side following their 4-1 defeat at Rochdale, telling them they need to 'wake up'.
Gary CaldwellGary Caldwell
Gary Caldwell

The Scot watched on as his players were deservedly thumped by their League One hosts in what was another very poor pre-season showing.

Wigan were on the back foot throughout the afternoon with sloppy errors at the back and little to no creativity up front.

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Yanic Wildschut scored Latics’ first goal of the summer when he fired home Luke Burke’s cross to make it 2-1.

But Caldwell’s men crumbled after that, much to the dismay of the Wigan boss.

“It’s a wake up call for everyone,”he fumed. “When you have success it can breed its own problems.

“Everyone has to wake up, last year is gone and we have to be ready for a massive challenge in two weeks time.

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“The good thing is it’s happened now and it’s not happened in the league so it won’t hurt us in terms of points but we have to do something quickly.

“Results come from good performances and when you get beat 4-1 there aren’t many positives to take from it.”

Caldwell offered no excuses as to his side’s display.

He praised Rochdale for their performance though, adding that they showed his players how it should be done.

“We were disappointing right from the start of the game,” he said. “Even when we got back into the game at 2-1 when there was a chance to maybe get something we gave away two terrible goals so it was a disappointing day.

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“Rochdale passed the ball very well. We had excuses at Macclesfield and Chester with the pitch.

“Today there were no excuses, it was an excellent pitch and Rochdale showed us how to do it.

“They passed the ball well, caused us problems and deserved to win.”

There were concerns for Stephen Warnock who hobbled off with a calf injury early in the first half.

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The defender when straight down the tunnel but Caldwell explained that it was just a precaution.

“He’s hopefully going to be ok,” he said. “He took a kick to his calf. He would have stayed on if it was a league game but at this stage there’s no point taking risks.”