Peter Cklamovski has spent more time than anyone else riding shotgun with Ange Postecoglou - so for him, a rocky start to a new job is not just familiar terrain, but preferred.
This time around, the rocks were extra jagged.
Being a self-proclaimed Postecoglou “disciple” was an advantage not so long ago. Now, post-Tottenham , and post-Nottingham , Postecoglou’s reputation in England has taken a battering, as unfair as that may be, to the point where even those who have worked with him are tainted by association.
So when Cklamovski lost his first three matches in charge of English fourth-division club Salford City this season, some online critics swiftly settled on a nickname for him: ‘Temu Postecoglou’. Or ‘Temu Ange’, or any such derivative. The inference is clear, and it stings: he is a lesser version of a coach they don’t rate.
“That’s modern-day football, modern-day society,” he tells this masthead.
“I’m proud of my connection with Ange, and I want to be a proud extension of his legacy. That’s how much I love the guy. Within that, there’s no secrets. They know, they’ve learned that I’m an Ange disciple, let’s say - so I guess there is a bit of a stigma to that, potentially.
“But that’s all noise. If I do my job, and do it well, and do it the way I know I can, then that will be the way we can build something that we dream about. Stay humble, take the bullets when needed, no problem - but don’t let it knock you down.”
Such is the fickle nature of the game that those same supporters who wanted him gone a couple of months ago are probably now singing his name.
Salford City are cruising on top of the table amid a club-record seven-game winning streak, and Cklamovski has just been named League Two’s manager of the month. It’s still early days - there are still 33 more games to be played this season - but they are hot favourites to be promoted, and some of the sport’s biggest names are swooning about the aggressive and relentless attacking football Cklamovski has them playing.
Of all the teams in England’s Football League - the umbrella organisation for the three tiers below the Premier League - Salford City is arguably the best-placed to trace a similar arc as Wrexham and rise up the pyramid, powered by celebrity investment.
Actually, they kind of invented the concept of ‘doing a Wrexham’.
In 2014, five members of Manchester United’s fabled Class of ’92 - Gary Neville, Phil Neville, Paul Scholes, Ryan Giggs and Nicky Butt - purchased the club, which is only a short drive from Old Trafford, and only a kilometre from where they used to train together. David Beckham later joined the ownership group, and their early efforts to lift the then-little-known club from the obscurity of England’s eighth division were captured in a fly-on-the-wall documentary by the BBC.
But after four promotions in five years, their progress stalled, and the ‘Ammies’ - a nickname taken from the club’s old name, Salford Amateurs - have been stuck in League Two for the past seven seasons.
Most of the former players sold up as part of a recent ownership restructure which brought in fresh international capital - but Beckham and Gary Neville retained their shares, and their new ambition is to eventually bring Salford City into the Premier League.
The club has also gone back to its roots, reverting to its traditional orange colours this season and ditching the United-inspired red shirts introduced by the ex-players - a decision Gary Neville has since admitted was “quite selfish” and an error he was happy to rectify.
League Two was not exactly top of Cklamovski’s list for his next job, but when the opportunity to join Salford City bobbed up while on holiday in England with his family, and he came to understand the scale of their project, he couldn’t say no.
The initial approach was made by Gavin Fleig, a former City Football Group executive who now runs Salford City, and who knew Cklamovski from his time working under Postecoglou at Yokohama F. Marinos, a CFG partner club .
Cklamovski, 48, was Postecoglou’s assistant in a variety of roles for more than a decade, but branched out on his own after lifting the Japanese title with Yokohama in 2019, and most recently was coach of the Malaysian national team.
Scholes no longer holds his 10 per cent stake, but remains at the club as chief football advisor. He was not alone in needing to look up Cklamovski’s name, but was blown away by his interview.
“Peter was very impressive, right from the word go,” he said in a club feature on YouTube.
Now Scholes watches the first team train most days, and acts as a valuable sounding board for Cklamovski.
“He’s around for anything I need, really ... a really good eye for League Two because he’s been watching it for a decade or so, intimately,” Cklamovski says. “For me, that’s a depth of knowledge that I can always lean on.”
Other ex-United legends, including Roy Keane, routinely turn up for matches at their 2,246-seat home ground, Moor Lane, and more will jump on the bandwagon if their current form continues. After their most recent performance, a 4-2 victory over previously unbeaten Walsall, Gary Neville said he’d never seen Salford City play better football.
With all the star power surrounding him, Cklamovski has to keep a deliberately narrow focus.
“There might be a bit of glitz and glamour in and around the club, but if I take my eye off what’s the most important thing, which is to get the football right, then I’m not doing my job,” he says.
“The club has lofty ambitions, that’s for sure, and it’s being met with a solid plan. My job here is to put the foundation of the football in place ... build that identity of football for Salford City and, along with that, push hard and achieve success and get the club stepping up the English pyramid.“
For Cklamovski, that means doing what he has always done: trusting the process, even when it may feel like the walls are closing in on him.
After those three first-up defeats, a fourth beckoned, and questions about his future would have surely followed. Salford were at home to Newport County and absolutely dominating - they finished with 31 shots to 4 - but it was one of those games when the ball just wouldn’t go in. Naturally, they went down 1-0 in the 71st minute, conceding a freakish long-range goal in which their goalkeeper was lobbed from 60 metres out.
“I’m thinking, ‘Oh no, not this again,’” Cklamovski says.
“But there was a part inside me that was loving it. Seen it before, lived it before. I just knew that this is going to add to the story.”
Salford scored twice in the final 10 minutes, including a 90th-minute winner to prevail 2-1. Cklamovski looks back on it as the “circuit breaker” moment when his players were rewarded for refusing to abandon their principles - a familiar juncture for teams schooled in the ways of Angeball.
“I knew we were on track,” Cklamovski says. “I knew the boys were believing in the football, that the evidence was there on the pitch. They felt it. They saw it. They trained it.”
The wins have flowed freely ever since, but there will be potholes in the road ahead. Cklamovski is encountering all the unique challenges of England’s lower professional leagues: the physicality is high, the stadiums almost uncomfortably intimate, the supporters fiercely passionate, while games can descend into disorder without warning.
“There can be a lot of chaos in a game,” he says.
“It might be a referee call, it might be a tough away game, and the crowd get on top of you ... but chaos can get created very easily in this league. If we can control that chaos and play our football, then that control becomes a bit of a weapon.”
It’s been a major change of pace for Cklamovski, who was accustomed to coaching in front of huge crowds in high-profile gigs in charge of FC Tokyo and Malaysia. Now he’s criss-crossing the heartlands of English football, working out of tiny grounds and falling for the peculiar romance of the lower leagues - all while trying to build something that he believes will one day find its way to a much bigger stage.
“It’s humble beginnings right now,” he says.
“But I’m sure in 12 months, 18 months, two years’ time - whether I’m here or not - the club will be a bigger brand, a bigger football club. You’ll see this place in a really innovative sort of spot where it’s building, and building something special. To be a small part of that, mate, it’s exciting.”
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