By Alan Baldwin
LONDON, Jan 11 - New Bolton Wanderers manager Owen
Coyle described leaving Burnley as "an unbelievable wrench" on
Monday and denied he had been motivated by money to join their
Premier League rivals.
The 43-year-old Scot, whose first game in charge will be at
home to Arsenal on Sunday, made clear at a presentation at the
Reebok Stadium that he saw Bolton as his best bet for a
long-term career in the Premier League.
Avoiding relegation will be the immediate priority however,
with his new employers currently 18th in the 20 team standings,
although Coyle expected both Bolton and Burnley to beat the drop
in the end.
"The emotional attachment alone goes without saying," he
said of Burnley. "But I tried to take the emotion out of it and
make what we felt, myself and my staff, was a football
decision."
Coyle, who played for Bolton in the mid 1990s, joined
Burnley in 2007 and last season took them back into the top
flight of English soccer for the first time since 1976. They are
14th in the league, but just two points ahead of Bolton.
Burnley do not have the resources of the league's
big-hitters and Coyle questioned how much would have been
available to him in the summer even if they stayed up after the
struggles of this year.
"It was very much a transitional period. I was probably
trying to move things quicker than the finance would dictate,"
he said.
"There's two things that happen as a football manager. You
do well, and you move on. Or you don't, and you're moved on.
That's sort of what's happened."
Coyle felt Bolton, with their facilities and infrastructure,
had more to offer.
"I have an unbelievable challenge ahead of us here, a
magnificent football club and magnificent stadium and we now
have to take that on," he said.
"My motivation isn't the finance or anything else that goes
with it. If it was finance, I'd have taken the Celtic job.
"I want to be involved at the highest level. The highest
level in world football is the English Premier League and I want
to do that for a sustained period.
"Celtic was the team I supported as a boy and I spoke to
Celtic in the summer and they offered me the job and I turned it
down to stay with Burnley. I think that puts a few things to bed
in terms of motivated by finance and everything else."
(Editing by Justin Palmer; To query or comment on this story
email sportsfeedback@thomsonreuters.com)