WITH Football League safety guaranteed before the end of the 2020/21 season, Keith Curle started planning for the next one.

He had only committed to a short-term deal at Boundary Park initially - a chance for both parties to test the water, but it was in Curle's interests more than anyone to really suss out the situation.

He was offered the chance to stay and continue the job he had started.

Understandably, he needed time to mull it over. But his professional attitude meant that, regardless of his own position, he wanted to set up a proper pre-season for Latics, and sent the players home with fitness programmes to ensure they returned after the summer break in good shape for whoever was head coach.

Certain wheels were in motion about targets, budgets and player availability, indicating that Curle would remain in charge. But, even so, the agreement to stay for another season did not happen overnight.

"They kept on saying I was the head coach, which I haven't got a problem with. You can call me what you want," said Curle.

"But how I see a head coach is your focus is purely only on the first team environment, which also I haven't got a problem with, but I don't think it's right.

"I've got a way of working that I don't think it matters what you call me. You can call me bottle washer if you want, I'll still do what I think is the right thing to do and sign players that I think are going to be good enough to get you where you need to be, bearing in mind the ambition of the club when I was there was getting to mid-table. But that's difficult when you can't bring players in and you're dealing with the same players that were operating in the bottom of the division the year before, and you're trying to bring in players - cheaper players... how are you going to improve?

"We couldn't get rid of the players who were already there, because nobody wanted them.

"Some of the ones you'd identified as being surplus, how can you get rid of them if nobody wants them. Unless you go down the route of forcing players out, which I said from day one is not my way.

"David Wheater was still a signed professional when I came to the club, but I never saw him, and then they did a deal with him."

Curle wanted clarity on certain aspects before i's were dotted and t's were crossed, and - as he has previously mentioned - communication was not their strong point.

He was to discover quite how deficient they were in that department the hard way. And by that point his own deal was done.

Having done the groundwork to make plans for his squad, Curle ear-marked the areas that needed strengthening, lined up players he felt would improve the team, and got the green light to sign them.

Five of them were unveiled on one evening, and in that moment Latics went from a side that had lurked too long in the bottom half of tables to one that gave reasons for optimism. This was enhanced by a reasonable pre-season programme in which, despite defeat to Wigan and Premier League Burnley they competed pretty well in both home games against strong opposition.

It was all part of a long-term process for Curle. His summer recruitment was designed to give them a sound platform to build on and then add to in January.

He had told Mo Lemsagam, who he had expected to relay the message to his owner brother Abdallah, that he needed two transfer windows to get the squad into a position where it could become one capable of challenging in the top half of the table.

It was not short-termism. He had a vision for his players and the club. But before his first transfer window had closed he had the rug pulled from underneath him, meaning two of his first five signings - goalkeeper Jayson Leutwiler and defender Harrison McGahey - were not eligible to start the season.

The club had taken out a loan with the English Football League to offset the losses caused by the pandemic and a season behind closed doors after the previous campaign was aborted.

But the consequences of a transfer embargo were not passed on to the people who needed to know.

"After I agreed to stay, during the summer, an agent told me about the ramifications of this loan," Curle explained. "So I rang up Karl Evans and mentioned it, and he said 'I don't think we've taken that loan, I think we've taken a different loan'.

"So we went back in for pre-season and at the beginning of pre-season I was still talking about players and agreeing players, I've had a conversation with Karl about it again and he said he was going to look into it.

"We had meetings at the club where I spoke to the secretary, Beechy (Michael Beech), spoke to Mo, spoke to Karl Evans and it became evident then that taking the loan and the loan details were dealt with by the accountant and the owner.

"It was down to Shahed (finance director Shahed Alam) and the owner. They just took the money and didn't think about the ramifications of taking the money and how it affected the running of the football club.

"You couldn't start the season how you wanted to, you can't bring in players, you're trying to assure players that you've signed that everything will be resolved. You're speaking to agents and representatives. One thing you can't say in football is 'trust me, sign this'.

"The club were trying to get things put in contracts but to protect the players they couldn't sign it.

"I think the club tried to find ways around it and every time they rang up the EFL with another proposal the EFL just carried on saying 'no' to them, and they had to go back to the guidelines."

But Curle does not blame the EFL.

"No, because when you actually look at the document it's written there and very simply broken down as well, what you can and can't do. If you pay it back in one lump some, no restrictions, if you pick a payment plan the stipulations are different again," he said.

"You've got a chief exec who's used to dealing with football figures that hasn't seen the agreement. I knew Karl from his Bury days so you knew it was someone who had been through difficult times so he'd be well positioned, but he was totally excluded from everything.

"The problem was nobody that was football operational knew the extent of exactly what the loan was. Then everyone was frantically ringing up the EFL saying 'can we do this, can we do that?' and the EFL's response was 'we've sent it through when we sent the loan. All the information has been given to you, why have you not been reading it'. I said to Karl and the secretary, 'surely you must have read it?'.

"He knew they had some money but that was it. So that's your starting point."

TOMORROW: Unlucky at Bradford; under-prepared at Brentford