Wigan Athletic manager Paul Cook has departed the club having made the decision to resign following the financially troubled Latics’ relegation from the Championship.

Cook had managed to help Wigan become one of the Championship’s most in-form teams during the second half of the campaign, which saw them move away from the relegation zone and up to 13^th place in the table, before a 12-point deduction kicked in at the end of the season and they were relegated to League One.

The 53-year-old led Wigan to promotion from League One in his first season in charge of the Latics claiming the title and amassing 98 points, before he managed to keep the club in the Championship last term following a good run of form in the last few weeks of the campaign.

Wigan’s troubles financially off the field are likely to mean that the club are going to have to sell a number of their influential performers, with the likes of Joe Gelhardt being linked with a move to Leeds United and Kieffer Moore being linked with a move to back to the Championship.

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Cook has now made the decision to call an end to his time at he club, and having already been linked with the vacant managerial role at Bristol City it could be interesting to see where the former Portsmouth manager ends up.

The verdict

Cook’s stock certainly remains very high despite Wigan suffering relegation to League One, with off the field problems the reason for that relegation and not on the field performances, which actually would have been enough to earn a very respectable mid-table finish.

The 53-year-old is a proven manager having earned promotions with Chesterfield, Portsmouth and Wigan and has shown during the last two seasons he is good enough to get the best out of a group of players in the Championship – and that should make him a very promising candidate for a number of jobs.

For Wigan this is yet another major blow and you really do have to feel for the supporters of the club at the moment, but this was perhaps an inevitable consequence of their relegation to League One – and it is vital that off the field issues are sorted out before any new manager can come in and have a chance to turn things around.