OWEN COYLE has politely turned down an approach from Motherwell to discuss the vacant manager's position at Fir Park.
On a day in which Winston Bogarde, the former Ajax, Barcelona nad Chelsea defender, threw his hat into the ring to replace Stuart McCall, it emerged that officials at the Lanarkshire club had contacted Coyle to ask if he would be interested in returning to coach the team he played for between 1997 and 1999.
However, the 48-year-old is settled with his family in England and it is understood that he declined the option because he wants to continue his career there, following spells in charge of Burnley, Bolton Wanderers and Wigan Athletic.
Coyle refused to confirm that he had been sounded out by Motherwell - club officials are currently sifting through more than 50 job applications - when asked by Herald Sport last night. He did admit, though, that he is waiting for the right opportunity to present itself south of the border after leaving Wigan in December of last year.
"When you have worked in the Premier League and the Championship in England, that, with all due respect, is the level you would like to continue working at," he said. "I played in Scotland all my days and I stick up for the game at every turn, but I worked in the best league in the world for three years and took a team [Burnley] there from the Championship that maybe shouldn't have made it there given the budget we were on. My team and I are proven at a very high level. I have turned four or five things down in the last five or six months. From a family point of view, we have been down there for seven years now and have loved our time there. We are very settled."
Coyle's last stint in management lasted less than six months at Wigan Athletic, but that had as much to do with a difficult relationship with the club's owner, Dave Whelan, as results on the park.
"I have been blessed throughout my career as a player, a coach and a manager, but, if I made one mistake, it was taking the Wigan job," he said. "We were only a few points off the play-offs with a game in hand when we left and had played in Europe, so that was nothing to do with football. Wigan had been relegated and left with 11 players when we went there. Two of those [players] were James McCarthy and Arouna Kone, who were always going to leave.
"I was told that the money raised would be reinvested in the squad and that was great as I had shown I knew how to build a squad and take a team from the Championship to the Premiership.
"That simply did not happen. When I tried to spend money on the kind of striker needed to get out of the Championship, it became clear that was never going to happen. In essence, I was fed lies."
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