Why Gary Caldwell believes the next fortnight will shape the rest of Wigan Athletic's campaign

The Scot has had a crazy first week since returning to Wigan as manager, almost a decade after being sacked at the beginning of the 2016/17 campaign.

After being unveiled to the media on Monday morning, he met the players for the first time on Monday afternoon, and they only had a couple of sessions ahead of Wednesday's 1-0 victory over Luton Town.

A similarly short turnaround led into Saturday's 4-2 defeat at promotion chasing Stockport County, which saw Latics drop back into the bottom four on goal difference.

But with Latics now having the luxury of a whole fortnight without a midweek game, Caldwell is desperate to get everyone together at Christopher Park - and plot the way up the league ladder.

"We've got two big weeks ahead of us now - with no midweek games - where we can work hard on the training ground to correct some of the problems we have in our game," he said.

"There are certain aspects of our game that have to be better, but we will cause a lot of teams a lot of problems with the way we attack. It's probably the other side of the game that we have to get better at.

"This has been a really difficult week for everyone. You've a new manager coming in, the players have had to take new information on board, you've got games on Sunday, Wednesday and Saturday, which is never easy."

Latics can certainly take plenty of positives from the defeat at Stockport, having led twice through Joe Taylor goals before paying a high price for second-half red cards for Steven Sessegnon and Maleace Asamoah Jnr.

"I thought we were excellent in the first half, we started so well," added the Scot. "But we had to be leading at half-time having played so well, we had to go in ahead.

"I didn't feel they were causing us too many problems, but the goals we conceded were poor.

"They were easy goals against, where the opposition don't have to do a great deal, and that's certainly something we have to work on.

"In the second half, the game became difficult, I thought the week probably took its toll, on a squad that's been hit a little bit.

"We couldn't play Owen Moxon against his parent club, we couldn't play Will Aimson because of an injury, and we got a little bit stretched in that second half.

"But I think the effort of the players this week has been incredible...everyone is fully engaged, and everyone is trying their best.

"There's so many positive parts of our game...some of our attacking play, some of our passing, the way we pressed, was excellent, especially in that first half.

"We created chances against a side sitting pretty near the top of the league, so there are positives we can take from this."