Jewell wins manager of the month award for October

... because the panel felt the Paul Jewell would not get the chance to win the award again. Instead, the Latics have outstripped the Champions for the month of October.

The Latics won all four of their league games, with home wins over Bolton, Newcastle and Fulham. Whilst the team had a good away win at Villa Park, conceeding just one goal in these four games.

Alongside the excellent league form Jewell's men knocked Watford out of the Carling Cup.

Jim Hytner from the Barclays Awards Panel said: “It's terrific to see Wigan leading the chasing pack behind Chelsea, they have been a breath of fresh air in the Barclays Premiership. Paul Jewell has secured the points on the pitch and he's now winning plaudits off it.”

Whilst Jewell himself was delighted to pick up the award and stressed it was the team as much as himself who had won the award. He told the club's official website: "The best thing about winning the award is that I know my team is winning matches. I know if we get another couple, we should be safe!"

Jewell pictured with his award

"We're playing four of the top teams in Europe over the next few games, the European Champions, two of the favourites for the Champions League, another team that's always there or thereabouts and Tottenham aren't too bad either!

"It's great to be going to those games with a decent points tally, it means we can approach them with a bit less fear and trepidation than if we had five, six, seven points.

"I never set targets, but if you'd said to me before the start of the season after eleven games would you have taken twelve points, I probably would have. So we are ahead of schedule, but I've just said to the players that we want to kick on from here, we don't want to sit on our laurels and admire how well we've done."

"There's only one game this season when I don't think the effort was right and that was Charlton away, the other ten games the players have always been positive, they've not always played to the best of their abilities but they haven't half worked their socks off.

"The last nine games, we've only dropped two points and after losing the first two games, that shows a lot of character. But we are going to need all that and more to get through the rest of the season. Survival has to be the aim. I know that if our standards drop we can easily slide down the table.

"I'm enjoying it at the moment, but eight games won't be enough to keep us up and we need to keep working hard.

"I never really like these awards, because it's down to the players ultimately, but having said that, managers are the ones who get the sack if things go wrong so maybe I should start taking the credit a bit more!

The only other manager to have previously won the award on consecutive occasions was David O'Leary during his time with Leeds United in 2001. The name of Paul Jewell may now be added to that list.