Southampton manager Russell Martin has added another member to his coaching staff with the news that Colin Calderwood is now a first team coach at St Mary's.
Southampton FC have announced the appointment of Colin Calderwood as a first team coach.
Many will remember Calderwood as a player, after a 400 games in the lower leagues, he joined Premier League Tottenham Hotspur in 1993, he would go on to play 163 games for Spurs before joining Aston Villa in 1999, he then played for both Nottingham Forest & Notts County before retiring as a player.
He initially started his coaching career at Spurs as reserve team manager and then managed Northampton Town where he led them to promotion from League 2 in 2006, before joining Nottingham Forest as their manager in the summer of that year.
Forest were then in League One and in his first season he led them to the play offs, only for them to lose to Yeovil, in his second season he led them to automatic promotion but his season in the Championship would end prematurely and he was sacked in December 2008, ironically a week after he had led Forest to a 2-0 win at St Mary's in what was a very toxic atmosphere.
He was not out of work long and within weeks was appointed a first team coach at Newcastle United, who would be relegated at the end of that season, however he stayed in his job and helped manager Chris Hughton take the Toon straight back up in 2009/10.
He would then become something of a football nomad, a year as manager at Hibernian, then linking up with Hughton again at Birmingham, a couple of years at Norwich and staying with Hughton when he joined Brighton in 2015.
Then it was back to another former club in Aston Villa in November 2016 for a spell working with Steve Bruce.
December 2018 saw him appointed Cambridge manager, staying a little over a year before being sacked.
In October 2020, he joined Blackpool as assistant manager and helped them to promotion to the Championship, but in June 2021 he rejoined Northampton as assistant manager where he remained until joining Saints today.
Southampton supporters will be happy with this appointment as it is a man who at 58 years old has plenty of experience as both a player and also as not only a manager, but in coaching capacity's.
Many have commented on the lack of real experience in Russell Martin's coaching staff, most are only experienced in the lower leagues and also their careers have mirrored Martin's himself.
So the appointment of Calderwood has to be good news, a member of the coaching staff with genuine long term experience at the highest level both as a player and a coach.
He will also bring a fresh viewpoint into the set up and a independent overview of the situation.
Director of Football Jason Wilcox had this to say:
"We are delighted that Colin has agreed to join us and further strengthen Russell’s backroom team.
"He has a wealth of experience from his many years as a coach and manager that we know will be invaluable to our squad.”
Clearly this is an appointment from Wilcox who seems to have recognised the fact that the coaching set up does not have enough experience, I would imagine he has spoken to Russell Martin about this and the need to give the manager someone who can provide not only that experience, but also fresh ideas.
Calderwood being a central defender will hopefully add the degree of coaching needed, no one is disputing that Saints have perhaps the strongest squad in this division, but that it has underperformed and error prone, hopefully this will see us not only fine tune the passing game which has improved greatly over the past month, but a new perspective.