Big Interview: Richie Wellens - ‘Robins Are Too Big A Club For This Division'

WHEN Richie Wellens walked into the County Ground 13 months ago, the Robins looked like relegation fodder.

- Chris Dunlavy

Seventeenth in League Two. Brittle and drifting. A 4-0 hiding at home to Carlisle in his opening match served only to highlight the terrifying task in hand.

But for the former Leicester midfielder, such challenges were modest compared to those he’d already faced.

As a rookie manager at Oldham Athletic in 2017-18 under notorious Latics owner Abdallah Lemsagam, Wellens was an unwitting participant in football’s answer to Fawlty Towers.

Facilities either crumbling or repossessed. A training ground in ruins. Then there was Lemsagam himself, a chairman more hands-on than your average masseuse.

From bursting into the dressing room to meddling in team selection, the former agent refused to take a back seat – including awarding lucrative contracts to useless trialists behind the manager’s back.

“It wasn’t exactly a good grounding,” says the 39-yearold, a former Manchester United trainee who made 600 EFL appearances over the course of his 16-year career. “Tough would be a better word. You have to do things you wouldn’t expect. You have to go through situations that aren’t the norm.

“At any club, the relationship between manager and chairman is paramount. If it’s good, it’s invaluable. If it isn’t, the whole thing will fall apart. “It’s no good a manager having one conversation about team selection with his staff, then going away and having another conversation with the chairman.

“Because the manager might then have to pick one person whilst the staff have all agreed on somebody else. It just causes conflict and distractions that you don’t really need.”

Relegation was the inevitable outcome, and Wellens’ escape to Wiltshire initially appeared a case of frying pan to fire.