Gary Caldwell delivers honest verdict after Wigan Athletic's first pre-season outing

Wigan Athletic boss Gary Caldwell says his side’s opening pre-season defeat to Port Vale highlighted both encouraging signs and areas requiring improvement ahead of the new League One campaign.

The Latics were beaten 3-1 at the Brick Community Stadium on Saturday afternoon as Rhys Walters scored twice for the visitors before a trialist added a third. Academy graduate Harrison Rimmer grabbed a consolation for the hosts.

While disappointed with the result, Caldwell insisted pre-season is mainly about building relationships and fitness levels ahead of the new League One campaign.

“It’s never good to lose a game of football, but it is pre-season, and there is a long way to go until the start of the season,” he said.

“I think you could see a new group getting to know each other, getting to understand how we’re going to play.

“I felt like we were a bit off it in the first half. I felt like they were the more energetic team - they ran a bit more than us, we couldn’t quite get to duels and win enough duels, and then the game becomes very difficult.

“In the second half, I thought we got better, and in the last half-hour, I thought we got a lot better when we made the changes. There is loads to learn from it and loads to take out of it, and a bit closer in terms of physically getting the players up to speed, but there is still lots to work on as well.”

Caldwell introduced 10 changes on the hour mark, with the likes of Joseph Hungbo, K’Marni Miller and Rimmer all making positive impacts as Wigan improved during the closing stages.

Despite the focus of pre-season being on preparations for the new campaign, the Latics boss insists he still expects his side to be competitive in every game.

“Yeah, but we want to win, we don’t want to lose games of football, so we have to address that and look at why that was, and we have to look at the game in more detail and areas that we’re trying to work on,” he added.

“Some of that was good, other bits can be better, but overall, I think you could see we still need to build our physical fitness, need to build our match fitness, and we will do that over the coming weeks.

“There were loads of new players and loads of new relationships in the team that we obviously need to keep working on.

“There were some positive performances, some who can do better in certain actions of the game, so we’ll review that on Monday, and we’ll get back to work.”