Why Wigan Athletic will have themselves to blame if Josh Magennis fires for Exeter City

The 34-year-old striker, who recently made his 600th career club appearance, has 13 goals to his name this term for Gary Caldwell's men.

And if he increases that tally against his former side at St James' Park, Laytics will only have themselves to blame for the sequence of events that saw him switch clubs last summer!

"Big Josh has been absolutely brilliant for us," acknowledged Caldwell. "I obviously still speak to Graham Barrow regularly on football and different things, and he's always someone who throws names and players my way.

"When Josh got released by Wigan, Graham told me he was someone I had to get in touch with. He lives near Bolton, so I met up with hima couple of times, and we managed to persuade him to come down to Exeter.

"And he's been a massive addition for us on and off the field. He's scored goals, but not just that, he's a big character, and he leads the line with presence and experience.

"We're quite a young team, and he shows the young players the way forward, and I can't praise him enough."

Caldwell is enjoying his time at Exeter, after unhappy managerial spells with Chesterfield and Partick Thistle followed his Latics departure in October 2016.

"I'm loving it down here, it's a brilliant football club," he added. "It's obviously very challenging in League One at the moment, which Wigan are also finding out, the landscape has changed so much since I was there in 2015-16.

"There's some huge football clubs, some huge budgets, and it's a brilliant league to be involved in. We're one of the smaller teams at this level, but I like to think we punch above our weight.

"I've been down here for two-and-a-half years...I have to live with Perks, that's one of the downsides...but you can't have everything!

"It's been a tough season, but hopefully we can pick up some wins in the last 10 games and finish quite high up the league. We've finished 16th and 13th in the last couple of years, so if we can try to get around that again, it will be a decent finish.

"Having said that, we know we've got some tough games, including Wigan, as well as Wrexham and Stockport coming here, which will hopefully be full houses."

Caldwell is aiming to be on best behaviour following a recent red card against Lincoln City - which he blamed on his 'Scottish accent'!

Explaining the incident, he said: “There is no way to communicate with the fourth official unless you leave your technical area. I didn't run, he said I was aggressive, people who know me, I've got a Scottish accent.

"Jen (Caldwell's partner) complains all the time how aggressive I am to her, to the kids, to the dog - I think it's the Scottish accent.

"It comes across very aggressive, but I didn't swear, I didn't run, in my opinion I wasn't aggressive. My accent and my Scottishness is aggressive, but yeah, I got sent off for that."