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He might not yet have a Wikipedia page, nor kicked a ball as a professional footballer, but Matt Craddock could yet prove a secret weapon in Wanderers’ pursuit of Championship football.
Ian Evatt went to great lengths to explain last week that Craddock’s appointment as first team coach a fortnight ago was not down to the recent run of excellent results but more to do with his suitability, qualifications, and character.
By all accounts, some experienced heads applied for the job vacated by Sam Hird at the start of October when he left for a role with the PFA. But Craddock had already impressed in his work with the B Team over the last couple of years, and the fact Bolton hardly put a foot wrong as he stepped up on an interim basis cannot have done him any harm.
Thrown straight in at the deep end with a punishing away double-header at Wycombe and Charlton, there has been little time for him to reflect on his own promotion.
But as the game increasingly embraces coaches who have not progressed down the traditional post-playing career route, Craddock says he has worked hard to get to this point.
“I don’t have that professional football background, so the road to this point has been a long one,” he told The Bolton News. “I have been coaching since I was 16, I remember going to support an after-school club down the road. Someone told me early on that if I wanted to coach as a profession then I would have to say ‘yes’ to every opportunity I got, and so right at the start I was doing four or five different jobs.
“I have worked with four and five-year-olds, teenagers, adults, educated teachers on delivering PE, I was a coach educator with the Football Association delivering courses, then I went into Preston North End for five years before I made the step over to Bolton.
“I have worked in academies, I have been coaching a long, long time. And I know nobody will know who I am, but I am confident in my ability and really appreciative of the chance.
“You don’t see too many coaches without a playing background. There are more nowadays, though, and I am proud of my journey but there have been so many people who have helped me along the way.
“I have wanted an opportunity for such a long time, so that the club have given me a chance to demonstrate my value is so important to me.”
Six weeks into the new job and Craddock says he is settling into the routine of first team football, helped by a positive mood around the camp and a sense that Bolton are now completely au fait with the football they are being asked to play.
“Like everything, it is better when you are winning,” Craddock said. “The feeling around the place has been great but what I have seen is the stability in the camp. Everyone is calm, they are really focussed on the job, and I think whatever the outcome of games it is very much about processes, and that has become really clear to me since moving into this role.
“It was always about evolving in a sustainable and progressive fashion. The gaffer and his staff have embedded a real philosophy in the club and they are clear on how we want to play. It’s just supporting them now, and for me just trying to continue to brilliant work that went before. We just have to help the players, tweak, and improve wherever we can, no different to what I did with the B Team really.”
The B Team project has sat in the background with relatively little fanfare over the last couple of seasons as a squad of young players settled under Craddock’s watch. But this season the first signs of progress have been visible to those outside Lostock’s walls, with Conor Carty’s success at St Patrick’s and Luke Matheson’s push for first team football reflecting well on the second string development.
“I want to make it really clear that it wasn’t just me – there are some fantastic people behind the scenes,” Craddock said. “The gaffer, the club, Chris Markham and his team have all backed it, Dave (Gardiner) and his support staff at the academy have all worked hard to get the project off the ground. But ultimately that area – between the Under-18s and the first team – is a really difficult place to be in, even for established teams.
“To get to where we are now, have had as many games as we have, each one competitive, I was really pleased with the work we did.
“You don’t see the success immediately, but you do see some little shoots coming through. We have some really good loans, we have had players getting international caps, players around the first team and those who have a real pathway now.
“From the start I was told that the B Team was around developing players, not a team, and you are starting to see that with the work that has gone on. And that will continue because they have some really good processes and good people.
“Development takes time and you have to be consistent over a long period of time to get that shot. Luke came in externally and his progress has been really quick and linear, he is around the first team now, which is fantastic.
“We have Nelson (Khumbeni), Max (Conway) and Gez Sithole who are all on loan in the National League and Conor Carty who has had a fantastic season out in Ireland and won the FAI Cup in front of 45,000 people last week.
“There are a group who are still in the B Team who have their own pathway. And that is what makes it difficult to judge from the outside looking in, they will all pop at a certain time, some faster than others. But I think over time we will see more of those players out on good loans, making an impact in the Football League, maybe abroad, and hopefully in the first team as well.”
Evatt has talked recently about establishing a ‘Bolton brand’ of football, which will remain in place long into the future and Craddock has seen evidence of it slowly spreading right the way through the academy system.
“We have a profile, but things do take time,” he said. “Since the manager and his staff have been here they have developed that philosophy – however you want to call it – which will hopefully thread the first team all the way down into the academy with the Under-8s and nines. It does take time for the staff to understand it, then to make sure the players are really clear on it. And I think we are at a point now where the club knows how it wants to play, it is just now a case of filling those jobs and roles.
“Each position has requirements. Chris (Markham) and the manager recruits accordingly. Or we have players who have the potential to do those things and we need to coach them to make them better fit the system.”
Recruitment has often been a topic of intense debate since Evatt walked into the building three-and-a-half years ago and in particular the use of data analysis above the more traditional scouting methods which had gone before.
Intended to complement, rather than completely replace, human judgement on player potential and worth to the squad, Craddock has seen first-hand how it has been applied to try and improve his former players in the B Team.
“The way data and analysis is used at this club is different to anywhere I have worked before, the level of detail is phenomenal,” he added.
“Even in the B Team every player has a plan, and there are numbers for each of those areas, they have targets. We can have a game and by the time it finishes I can see the data on each player in each specific area, and how that player has performed on that day but also trends over time so we can track progress and demonstrate that we are making players better and closer to where they need to be.
“It is far from the time when you’d look at a player and say ‘my opinion is this’. Obviously, that opinion is still important but we also have data and footage which backs it up, makes it tangible.
“It is a more robust and transparent process, so myself, the staff, the players are all really clear on what we need. It is not some sort of secret, where I can stand there and say ‘I know where you need to improve’. They can see it, we work on it together. It gives ownership to the players and the staff too.”
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