FOOTBALL FLASHBACK: Chris Wilder is named Cobblers boss

It was a shock move by the Yorkshireman, who quit his role with promotion-chasing Oxford United to sign a three-and-a-half-year deal with the Football League's bottom club.

The Cobblers, just a matter of months after losing to Bradford City in the league two play-off final, had endured a nightmare start to the 2013/14 season.

Aidy Boothroyd had been sacked in December following a 4-1 home defeat at the hands of Wycombe Wanderers, and there was then a painful five-week period while chairman David Cardoza and the board looked for a new boss.

Andy King was handed the caretaker reins, but he couldn't change the fortunes of a team who were cut adrift at the bottom of the table.

Then, with the closing of the January transfer window just a matter of days away, Cardoza finally made his move, paying a pretty hefty compensation to Oxford for Wilder's services.

On the face of it, it was a very strange move, with Oxford just two points off the league two automatic promotion places and the Cobblers starting at a future in non-League.

But Wilder, who had steered Oxford to promotion back into the Football League in 2010, was keen for a new challenge... and that was certainly what he would get at Sixfields.

"It was a difficult decision," said Wilder at the time.

"I think people can look at the job I did at Oxford and say it was a decent job in terms of where it was and where it is now.

"I want Northampton's players to look forward to the challenge.

We're in a position where perhaps a lot of people have written them off - it's Northampton and one other going down.

"It's up to me and the players to change that."

Chairman Cardoza added: "I apologise that it's taken this long, but I'm certainly not apologising that it's taken this long to find the right person.

"A lot of people have tried to bully me, belittle me, force me into a decision before I'm ready to. The majority of the fans, I think, are behind me.

"We've paid significant compensation to Oxford, significant compensation to Aidy Boothroyd and now we're going to sign a few more players. It's a very expensive job.

"But we'll get the players in to make the difference.

Here, were republish the Chron's interviews with both Wilder and Cardoza from this week seven years ago, with our football writer at the time, Jefferson Lake, doing the honours.

The pictures were taken by Kirsty Edmonds.

Chris Wilder interview - published January 30, 2014

WILDER'S FOUR CORNERSTONES FOR BEATING THE DROP

While Saturday's trip to Cheltenham represents the latest vital fixture for the Cobblers, the emphasis this week has been firmly on recruitment.

Chris Wilder was finally installed as Aidy Boothroyd's replacement this week, taking his seat in the Sixfields manager's office on Monday morning.

After being introduced to the press, he then met the squad and began planning for the visit of Rochdale on Tuesday night.

A combination of a playing surface carved up by last weekend's game – played amid a torrential downpour and a rumbling thunderstorm – and plenty more rain in the meantime made the Sixfields pitch look more suitable for keeping cows on than playing football.

The postponement may be no bad thing; it has given Wilder extra time to examine his squad in training, more hours to spend planning new transfers and a spare Tuesday night with which he and his assistant Alan Knill could do the scouting thing.

The key area of his job now is recruitment.

New blood is needed at Sixields as a mater of urgency – the current transfer window closes at 11pm tomorrow night (Fri).

A case can be made for new additions in just about every area of the pitch, but what Wilder will be looking for are reinforcements that have as many as possible of the four essential tools for success.

"There are a lot of things," said Wilder, who is no stranger to building great sides and whose acquisition by the Sixfields kingmakers has been very well received by the club's supporters.

"I expect them to be mentally strong, physically competitive, we want the players to be technically good and we want them tactically aware and flexible.

"Those are the four cornerstones of the game. Some might have one, some might have two and some might have all four.

"If you can get lots of players with all four then you're moving in the right direction.

"First and foremost, you have to compete. That's standard for me, to compete and play, those are the things we have to do."

Wilder knows he has to hit the ground running at the Cobblers.

His work in the transfer market this week will go a long way to establishing how the team performs over the vital final 20 matches of the campaign.

There can almost be no margin for error given the short amount of the transfer window that remains.

But while it is easy to focus on the job requirements in the short term, it should also be noted that Wilder has a deal which will – hypothetically speaking – keep him at Sixfields until the summer of 2017.

It is the longest contract chairman David Cardoza has given to any of his managers and he has done so in the hope that Wilder builds an empire at Sixfields, where the diggers will soon arrive to redevelop the east stand into a shining new, money-producing facility.

Wilder himself would be delighted to produce his latest dynasty in Northamptonian claret and white.

He will, in the next few weeks and months, use his experiences at Halifax and Oxford to complete the first stage of that – survival.

"I had opportunities at Oxford to leave on about three or four occasions," he said.

"I could've gone into the Football League in the first five months.

"We'd had a fantastic turnaround when I first went there, we'd made changes and the crowd were really with us.

"We got on a roll – I think we went from 17th in the Conference to inishing a point outside the play-offs and that was with a five-point deduction.

"My loyalty shouldn't be questioned at all during that period and when you've been at two clubs for the lengths of time I have that tells its own story.

"I'd be delighted to spend a similar amount of time at this football club putting something together."

David Cardoza interview - published, January 30, 2014

CARDOZA - THERE WAS NO PANIC

David Cardoza says there was never a feeling of panic within the club while appointing Aidy Boothroyd's successor and has described comments suggesting that was the case as ‘just nonsense'.

The Cobblers chairman was a happy man on Monday morning as he ended more than a month without a permanent first-team boss at his club by appointing Chris Wilder on a three-and-a-half year deal.

It brought to an end one of the most drawn-out searches for a new manager in the club's history, and a period in which the anxiety of the supporters was palpable.

Cardoza was heavily criticised by a large section of the team's followers for what they perceived as a lack of action over a big decision as the January transfer deadline drew increasingly closer.

Such concerns snowballed to the point where questions were publicly being asked of the level of organisation within the club and there was even talk of protests against the board.

Such displays of disaffection never materialised and the dissent has almost entirely died down with the Wilder appointment, but as far as Cardoza is concerned there was no cause for concern whatsoever.

"Throughout this process there have been all sorts of comments thrown around about the club being in disarray or being a shambles and it's just nonsense," he said.

"The board of directors have gone about our business to find the right person to manage the club in the long term.

"While that has been happening, Andy King has been the caretaker who has got decades of experience in football – we didn't put the head of youth in charge, this was an experienced manager.

"There was never a feeling of panic. If there was, we'd have got someone in the day after Aidy left.

"We knew the problems that we had, we knew it was an enormous appointment and it wasn't a snap decision to get rid of Aidy just because we lost to Wycombe.

"That was a conversation we'd been having for weeks, months even, and he knew we had to improve or there would be action."

The more wild conspiracy theorists painted a picture of an owner who was deliberately marking time to avoid having to open his cheque book during the transfer window.

Such suggestions are of course preposterous but are essentially exaggerations of a generally-held concern; that the club was going to miss out on targets or leave themselves short when vital mid-season business was carried out.

A substantial transfer bid was made for Charlton Athletic striker Michael Smith, who has since signed for Swindon Town, so there was activity taking place.

Expect that to go up a notch in the next few days as Wilder begins to work through the list of players he hopes to recruit to his Sixields survival mission.

"I've been here for 11, 12 years and I've never done anything like that before so I don't know why people in the past couple of weeks have thought I disappeared off the face of the earth," he said.

"I can't talk about things every day if there's nothing to say.

"Of course players are going to come in and I'm going to spend the money.

"People think it's easy to go and get a manager and go and get players but they don't have an iota of a clue about how much money that costs.

"I'll take the blame because I'm the chairman but I'm not the one that has got us bottom of the league."

Boothroyd takes the bulk of the blame for that ‘achievement' but some must also go to the players.

Some will ind themselves replaced in the next few days as the transfer window closes, the point at which Cardoza wishes to be assessed for his January actions.

"I've said all along to judge us at the end of January," he said.

"We've just signed a manager who is two points off second place and he will be bringing in players.

"The fans can then make a decision after that."

The man making the decisions now is Wilder, the appointment of whom, Cardoza feels, will help restore his lost status with the club's disillusioned supporters.

"It's a bit of a love-hate situation with the fans at the moment, I love them and they hate me," he said.

"I've been in this position with the supporters before and we'll make up in the end because I've got the right manager in.

"Chris will then get the right players in and we'll all move on from where we are now."

Regardless, he concedes the search took too long.

"It definitely took longer than I wanted it to, 100 per cent," he said.

"What is frustrating is that Chris's name did get thrown at me quite early on but I didn't think there was any way it would happen.

"When you're looking for a manager you get all kinds of agents throwing all kinds of names at you and someone mentioned him but I thought there was no way so I let it.

"Then we got to the point where there was a genuine interest there so we brought him in."

HOW DID THINGS PAN OUT?...

Well, the appointment of Chris Wilder proved to be a master stroke by chairman David Cardoza...

The Cobblers avoided relegation from the Football League, ironcially seeing off Wilder's old team Oxford United on the final day of the season at Sixfields.

As for what happened next? Well, we can save that for another footballing flashback!