When Owen Coyle is sat in front of the media next week to be officially unveiled as the new manager of Wigan Athletic there is every chance that the club's PR man will have to hold him down.
Or perhaps slip him a little something beforehand. Coyle bubbles with an unrelenting enthusiasm and signing a one-year rolling contract with the FA Cup holders yesterday will have comes as a release from a sense of idleness which had gone on eight months too long.
Being sacked by Bolton Wanderers in October stung, but the 46-year-old will have derived greater discomfort from being left out of the game – media work and an occasional invite from a coaching pal offering temporary fixes to a man addicted to his profession. Coyle had been linked to the vacant post at Everton, and Celtic had Neil Lennon been lured to Goodison, but it was Dave Whelan who picked up the phone.
Wigan are not the most attractive club strutting about the English game – there was much tittering about how few supporters the club took to last season's FA Cup final, for example – but Coyle has not simply gotten into bed with the first chairman to bat his eyelids and push a contract under his nose. The position came with a place in the Europa League and a shot at the Community Shield on August 11, but Coyle will have been captured by his chairman's insistence on attractive football, too.
Pretty play would not prevent relegation to the npower Championship last season, of course, and Coyle will be acutely aware that he will have to inspire greater substance from a Wigan squad which might be pilfered before he holds his first training session. Yet it is often not what Coyle says which is most enthralling, but how he says it. The former Airdrie striker tends to speak with an unbridled enthusiasm which can cause him to gambol into cliche, but his sentiments are amplified by an intoxicating passion.
"Everybody recognises Wigan as a fantastic club with a chairman who wants to get back in the Premier League," said Coyle yesterday. "It was a blow to lose that status and we will look to get it back quickly."
He knows the challenge which faces him since he took Burnley into the top flight, before agreeing to take charge at the Reebok. "I've been there, I've done it and I'm looking forward to trying to get Wigan back to the Premier League and, hopefully, that's at the first opportunity," he added.
The coach will be afforded room to manoeuvre a way back to the Premier League but there was also a gentle reminder from Whelan that promotion this season should be considered to be his "total and utter priority".
"People will remember him from getting promotion at Burnley. He had a tough time at Bolton, some of our fans will remember that too," added the Wigan chairman. "He has a belief in Wigan and I can feel that."
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