Michael Clegg on Macclesfield exit and Atherton Colls return

Five years after leading Atherton Colls to the most successful spell in the club’s history, the 47-year-old is back in the dugout and looking to get them upwardly mobile once again.

Though Colls are on a much more stable footing than the club he first entered a decade ago, relegation from the Northern Premier League last season has been followed by a winless start in Division One, leaving them rock bottom of the table.

Defeat in the FA Cup Preliminary Round at Silsden has denied the club one lucrative stream this season but on Saturday they will travel to the North East to face Consett in the FA Trophy looking to give Clegg’s ‘second coming’ a proper lift-off.

“I’ve been completely humbled by the response,” said Clegg, an Atherton lad, now living down the road in Tyldesley. “Honestly, when I came to watch a game against Stalybridge recently I felt a pang of guilt because I wanted to help. For the next few days I was thinking ‘I could change that’ and why am I not helping them?

Michael Clegg is preparing for an FA Trophy game at Consett this weekend (Image: Newsquest)

“I was keen to have a year off, to be honest, but I think whatever happened I would have come back to Colls, eventually.

“It does feel like home. And we 100 per cent will not be in the bottom half of the table come April, I’d be willing to bet whatever you had on that.

“We will climb the league, whether it happens next week or the week after, we will be in a much better position soon.”

Clegg’s managerial journey since leaving Colls the first time has been eventful, to say the least. His four years at Ashton brought a Manchester Premier Cup and ended up being documented in the pages of a top-selling book by the club’s chairman, Jonathan Sayer.

More success followed at Warrington Rylands which led to his appointment at Macclesfield FC, the former Football League club whose board included at the time ex-Manchester United, Blackburn Rovers and Wales midfielder, turned pundit, Robbie Savage.

The job, by Clegg’s own admission, was ‘nearly’ a perfect one. And he came within 90 minutes of promotion in the NPL Premier play-off final, eventually won by Marine.

But the decision to part ways with Macc in the summer – which would then see Savage appointed as head coach – was more reciprocal than many realised at the time.

“I probably chased the dream a bit for a few years to see how high up I could get and I wouldn’t change a thing but at this stage in my life, I look at this job and it’s perfect for me,” Clegg told us.

“How my lads are doing at football (Clegg’s two sons are on the books at Salford City), how work is going at the moment, the reality is that those things come first now, and football management comes second. That has probably been the wrong way around in the last 10 years.

Atherton Colls chairman Paul Gregory with manager Michael Clegg (Image: Newsquest)

“I’ve probably grown up a bit and got a bit of perspective on what is important to me.

“But even this summer when I was still at Macc, it had been a strangely quiet time. Sav (Robbie Savage) liked doing most of it, so I’d given a list of targets to the club, and I was feet up and relax, see you at the start of pre-season.

“Working at a club of that size it’s a lot of phone calls from agents, there was always something, but I just always had a feeling that I wouldn’t start the season, whether that was for me or from their side. I was right.

“Everything dragged on longer than it shouldn’t have done. I wasn’t an angel, and I could have handled it better.

“I didn’t need to leave the club. A lot of people thought I got sacked but the club was keen for me to stay but the terms of my work there were different to the terms of my contract, and that is what I wasn’t happy with. Absolutely nothing to do with money, anything but, more that the conditions they wanted me to work under were a no-go.

“I got on really well with the board, well, there was only one person I didn’t get on with, but once they knew how torn that relationship was it proved impossible to carry on.

“I loved my time there. I think I won 15 out of 19 games there and two of them were with academy lads because we’d already secured second. I honestly haven’t got a bad word to say about the club, I hope it gets to where it wants to be again.”

Clegg took Colls from the lower reaches of the North West Counties League in his first spell to rub shoulders with some big non-league names and even bigger budgets but his second stint will not simply be a case of trying the same formula.

“I was really proud of what we did the first time around, and I’m no messiah, I had a really good team around me. We grew and learned as we went along,” he said.

“The whole thing moved that fast that we were always playing catch-up.

“What I have learned since I left was that the players we signed at Colls were there because they wanted to be there. Other places I have been with better facilities, more money, they tend to be the people I found it harder to work with and they start pulling in different directions.

“You always go for the person rather than the player.

Michael Clegg celebrating promotion in 2019 with his son (Image: Atherton Colls FC)

“I am just excited to be coming back because I feel Colls are getting the best version of me and a time in my life where my friends have businesses, we’re doing alright, I can probably help Paul with sponsorships, add more value to the job than just trying to get three points on a Saturday.

“We will turn some players around but also having trained a couple of times I can see there are some really good lads here. It’s obvious what they are missing – some direction, some leadership, just little things.”

Former players Ethan Kershaw and Tom Bentham have returned, and Clegg intends to adapt training schedules to allow him to attract some more experienced players. By his own admission, he will have to move away from the ‘don’t train, don’t play’ philosophy in order to bring in players whose work and family life can make juggling semi-professional football commitments difficult.

There are also plans to shift some fixtures so that they do not clash with Bolton Wanderers or the major European nights where casual fans – and even the players themselves – would potentially struggle to turn out.

Like most football managers at this level, considerations stretch way beyond what squad goes out on the pitch. Arranging fixtures to maximise home gates is not a factor Pep Guardiola or Ian Evatt would have to entertain.

“Bottom line, Bolton’s crowds are up so if they are at home, or United or City are playing in Europe, even Wigan at home, it does affect our level,” Clegg said.

“We have already asked for four Friday nights – two at home, two away – and we’re trying to bring Monday nights back instead of Tuesdays if we can.

“We’ve got lads in our squad who are Bolton fans who want to go and watch the game, and I do think it makes a difference.”

Michael Clegg back in his first spell in charge of Atherton Colls (Image: Carl Maguire)

The man who brought Clegg back to the club stirs a couple of cups of coffee and sits down in the hospitality lounge at the recently re-sponsored Dreams 2 Reality Stadium.

There isn’t much that should surprise Paul Gregory, the long-serving club chairman, but the fact his returning manager accepted the offer to replace Dave Chadwick was one of those rare occasions.

“I must admit, I never thought we’d get him back,” he told us. “He’d gone through the leagues with Rylands and Macclesfield – and I think it was a mistake letting him go, but that’s their problem, not ours.

“From day one of employing Michael, probably 10 years ago now, he came in from Atherton LR and we have him a three-year plan to get us out of North West Counties Division Two. Within five years we’d had three promotions, the club had to grow with him.

“We didn’t leave on bad terms and wished him the best when he went to Ashton, they’d offered him something completely different to anything we could ever offer him.

“We know we have to support him. The fact he is back and the buzz is back around the town again, it makes that job a lot easier.”

At this point, Gregory makes a quick call to Clegg to remind him of the interview. As feared it had slipped his mind, but thankfully his manic morning of making phone calls to prospective new signings and sorting invoices was only 10 minutes down the road.

Colls are operated on a modest budget compared with many of the clubs in their current division, let alone the one above. In every season they played in the Premier they started as favourites to go down but mixing with some of the money men and seeing how bigger clubs operate at the next level has taught Gregory and the committee some important lessons.

“It isn’t all money – we competed for a long time, four years, and people warned us and said we’d be lucky to do two seasons. It can be cruel,” he said.

“The people who got involved in the club all those years ago like myself, we could never have dreamed that we’d be operating at that level of football.

“When you go somewhere like Macclesfield, or Ilkeston and Worksop where you have one bloke throwing masses of money at it and worth half a billion quid, and I’m there, just a local lad doing my best, you just think ‘where are we now?’

 “If we get back to the Premier Division again, I think we would be more prepared than we were because that was a tough learning curve for us. We have made some good contacts, met some good people, and having Michael back again is a really big deal for us.”

The club has profited from a link with Bolton Wanderers, which sees the newly-rebranded women’s team play their home games at the stadium. The club have offered to make improvements around the ground and with pitch-care expertise, and the early evidence suggests the target of 200-plus supporters for each match will be easily met.

Though not able to match many of their rivals for wages and contracts, Colls rely heavily on the social aspect of the club, and creating a family feel among management, players and those who turn out from the town.

“We haven’t got the most fans, we haven’t won the most trophies, but the atmosphere here before and after the game is totally different,” Gregory explains, with no shortage of pride.

“If you pull the black and white stripes on you get treated like a hero. Once a Colls Mon, always a Colls Mon, they say. I think I need to get that spray painted somewhere.”

At this point, a grinning Clegg comes through the door with an apology. One isn’t necessary, as his chairman makes a good brew.

“The plan now is to get off the bottom of the table and up as far as we can, where it leads us, we’ll live with it,” Gregory concluded.

“There is no pressure on Michael at all, it is just a case of regaining stability and then we can work with that. But sounds from around the town are really positive, it’s bouncing.”

Mossley’s progress in the FA Cup has dampened plans for a grand homecoming on September 14, Clegg will now have to wait until Kidsgrove’s visit on September 28 for his first game back in the old dugout.

His first game this weekend at Consett has already guaranteed a bigger away support, with an extra coach now laid on to take supporters up to the town which once supplied the steel to build Blackpool Tower.

“I can’t wait to get going,” Clegg added. “It’s already feeling like the right decision at the right time of my life.”