Former Salford City boss Richie Wellens has hit out at Gary Neville and his fellow club owners for their running of the League Two club.
Former Manchester United midfielder Wellens was made manager at Salford back in 2020, with his former team-mate Neville his boss. United’s ‘Class of 92’ own a controlling stake in the club alongside Peter Lim.
Wellens guided Salford to their first piece of silverware as an EFL club when they beat Portsmouth in the EFL Trophy final at Wembley in March 2021. Just 11 days later though, Wellens was sacked as manager.
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The decision came just four months after the former Swindon boss had taken over from Graham Alexander, despite Neville being a vocal advocate for managers to be given more time by clubs. In an interview with The i, Wellens admitted he hadn’t taken the job for footballing reasons, but slammed his former United team-mate for his running of the club.
“You don’t get to make a long-term plan if you don’t first deal with the short-term,” Wellens said. “At Salford I wasn’t given any time at all [to implement a style]. I was working with a previous manager’s players, used to a totally different style to what I have.
“The decision to go to Salford was not a professional one. We were in [Covid] lockdown, I had a family back up in Manchester where we were going through our own problems. The move was for the wrong reasons.
“We were getting 13,000 at Swindon regularly. I had the club just where I wanted it to be, it was my baby. I loved it. Then at Salford, it was ‘let’s just win this week’, no plan about how we would try and win.
“Did I enjoy working there? No. I have certain standards, certain disciplines I think need to be in place in a football club, things any manager will tell you they need. I didn’t think they had them at Salford. When I was working in that kind of environment, I couldn’t enjoy it.
“I worked with a wonderful chairman, Lee Power, at Swindon. He let me run the football club, every decision was by me. It was all done with clarity and decisiveness. I was allowed to go with my gut.
“Then I walked into a situation where Gary Neville was the chairman with the Class of ’92 behind him. I didn’t handle that situation as best I could. Did I make mistakes? Absolutely. Could I have handled Gary differently and had better lines of communication? We could both have done.
“I want a good relationship with my chairman. I want to be able to talk to him about football over a coffee or a pint. What I don’t want is conversations that are meaningless and just for the sake of a conversation. Topics being brought up that shouldn’t have been in my remit.”
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