'˜Do the right things and the wins will come'

The 51-year-old, who was appointed as successor to Gary Caldwell in midweek, has only spent two days training with his new side.

But he is hoping the first building blocks towards leading Latics out of the bottom three of the Championship have been put in place.

“All I’m looking to do first and foremost is to get my ideas across in training, and hoping the players are receptive to the ideas,” he acknowledged.

“If you can get the players reproducing that on a daily basis, you’ll be quite confident they will produce the same in games, and play the sort of football you want to play.

“If you get them to do the right things, with and without the ball, then the wins come.

“Sometimes you have to grind out results, and win ugly, but really the overall aim remains the same – seeing the same quality every day in training, so it’s not a fluke when Saturday comes round and there’s more consistency about the brand of football.

“I’ve got a clear idea every day of how I want players to train, and if they don’t train that way then there’s no chance of seeing that on a Saturday, because you’re practicing to be a bad player.

“I’m relentless on little details – they have to be meticulous – because every single day matters.

“You might not see improvement over a week, but if you keep doing the same things, day in, day out, over three months, six months, a year, then whatever age you are you will improve.”

Joyce also laughed off the idea that, having spent much of his coaching career at Under-21 level at Old Trafford, he’d be in for a rude awakening in the Championship.

“I think if you look at some of the clubs I’ve worked for...if you’re telling me it’s not important for Manchester United to win a game...” he smiled.

“It’s very important you try and win whatever game you’re playing. If the lads get one chance in the first team and they’re not ready – and it costs the first team three points – they might not get another chance.

“I don’t see it’ll be any difference from that to playing in the Championship, because the demands you put on the players every single day, to make the most of every single chance they get, is the same.

“If you work somewhere for as long as I did at Manchester United, where there’s a certain DNA, you have to train a certain way and play a certain way. And that’s what I want to do here.

“The whole of the academy has to buy into that if you want to produce players who are going to graduate into the first team, and have the Wigan Athletic DNA.”

Joyce sought the advice of, among others, Sir Alex Ferguson and Jose Mourinho before taking the Latics job.

He also says he received congratulatory texts from ‘50 or 60’ of the scores of players he has helped to mould into top-quality players, and he’s confident that background will help him to hit the ground running at the DW.

“I think it’s a cheap, easy way out to name-drop, and I could throw at you a ‘Who’s Who’ of football really,” he added. “All the people I’ve worked for, including Sir Alex, you can see why they are top-class managers – it’s because they’re top class people.

“They’re very humble, intelligent, very personable, and you’d be a fool not to want to emulate those qualities, and the way they deal with stuff.”