It's official - Paul Scholes is the new manager of Oldham Athletic. He has finally signed an 18 month deal to keep him at Boundary Park until 2020. Although Scholes owns 10% of Salford City, he will step down from his role as director at the club. Former Latics coach Mick Priest has also been appointed as his assistant and the duo will take charge of tonight’s match at home to Yeovil Town.
Scholes said, “I couldn’t be any happier at the minute. It’s been a while. Obviously there’s been talk of it when I finished my [playing] career. It wasn’t something I was quite ready to do and there’s obviously been three or four times over the last six years where it could have happened and I’ve not been quite ready. But now I feel, I hope, the time is right to give it a go and hopefully we can be successful together. I want my team to be aggressive and focused on winning first and foremost. I know it’s not going to happen every week, but I go into every game expecting to win. I go into every game expecting my team to entertain, I want to be entertained on the side and plenty of fans want to be entertained and I’ll be thinking about scoring goals. I’ve prepared for Yeovil, I’ve seen them a few times. It’s a funny league. Any team can beat anybody, we know that and Yeovil are on quite a bad run, while we had a great win on Saturday, so there’s not much to change.”
The Latics owner, Abdallah Lemsagam commented, “Paul has won everything there is to win in football. He is a man who will bring a lot of footballing knowledge and his hunger to succeed in management will be there for everyone to see. It’s no secret how much he has wanted this job in the past and how much he loves this club, so I’m very happy to bring him into our family at Oldham Athletic. Paul will have my backing 100% and hopefully we can work together to bring success back to this club.”