On-loan Manchester City ace subject of 'remarkable' claim after Wigan Athletic loss at Huddersfield Town

Charlie Gray picked up his fifth caution of the season during Wigan Athletic's 2-1 defeat at Huddersfield Town - which triggers an automatic one-match suspension.

The on-loan Manchester City midfielder becomes the second Latics player this season to reach the unwanted figure, after James Carragher missed the midweek defeat at Oxford for the same reason.

Gray only appeared off the bench at Huddersfield at the beginning of the second period, because boss Gary Caldwell is wary of pushing the 20-year-old too hard during his first season in 'men's football'.

And the Scot could not hide his disbelief that such a silky player has picked up so many cards in such a short space of time.

"It's remarkable," said Caldwell, who watched the game from the stands after picking up a ban of his own for accumulated yellow cards. "Remarkable."

Charlie Gray is the nicest, softest, gentlest midfield player. He's got pillows in his feet, he is that good a footballer, and he has five yellow cards this year.

"I find that incredible! When I'm telling the team every day that we have to be more aggressive, we need to tackle, we need to get into people's faces.

"You get yellow cards for anything these days! And I will say it again, he is the nicest No.6 in this league...well maybe not, Ethan Brierley's a lovely lad as well, who I had at Exeter last season.

"But he's one of the two nicest No.6s in this league, and he has five yellow cards already."

Gray’s bookings have come in each of the last five matches - against Wycombe, Stevenage, Reading, Oxford and now Huddersfield.

Meanwhile, Caldwell took issue with a post-match question that began with the suggested a result such as this one - against a side that went top of the table - would 'define the season'.

"I'm not buying that...I'm not buying that," he said. "We went to Sheffield Wednesday and we should have won. We beat Reading last week when they were the form team in the league.

"We came here with the intention of winning the game...and we didn't.

"We have to win football matches, we have to turn up with more intent, more desire, more hunger, more aggression to win football matches.

"I'm not buying that...we had every opportunity to win this game, we didn't, and we have to get over that.

"We look ahead now to the next game, and the one after that, with the intention to win, the belief to win, the game-plan to win, and we commit to that.

"That's my biggest disappointment...that we didn't commit to that 100 per cent until the game was going against us, and we were behind.

"We have to commit from minute one, because there is a quality in that dressing room, that when you see it in sporadic moments, excites you.

"But we don't see it consistently enough, and we need to change that."