Wigan Athletic found cult hero with £3m Wolves transfer agreement | OneFootball

In 2005, Wigan Athletic were celebrating promotion to the top-flight for the first time in their history, and a new striker helped them stay there.

In the summer of 2005 Wigan Athletic were celebrating promotion to the Premier League for the first time in their history, and the signing of Henri Camara helped them to stay there.

Even though their ascent through the divisions had been fuelled by the wealth of Dave Whelan, when Wigan Athletic were promoted to the Premier League in 2005 it still felt like a surprise.

A decade earlier, the club had been a mid-table team in the Third Division - now League Two - but in those intervening 10 years a new stadium had been built to replace their dilapidated Springfield Park home while the team had ascended through the divisions, winning the Third Division title in 1997, the Division Two title in 2003, and the Championship title two years later.

It was a stunning rise from a club who'd only been voted into the League in 1978.

But as many, many newly-promoted teams have found over the years, getting into the Premier League is only half of the final part of that journey. Once your club is there, you have to stay there, and that requires attracting players of that quality to your club.

Henri Camara was an international star when joining Wigan from Wolves who refused to play below top flight level

Wigan Athletic had a busy summer in the transfer market, and one of the players brought into the club was striker Henri Camara.

A Senegalese international since 1999, he'd been one of the star turns of their surprise run to the quarter-finals of the 2002 World Cup and arrived in England with the newly-promoted Wolverhampton Wanderers in the summer of 2003, when they paid the French club Sedan £1.5 million for his services.

He scored seven goals in 30 games for them in his first season with the club, including a run of scoring in five successive games, but this was not enough to keep Wolves in the Premier League.

And when the club were relegated back in 2004, he effectively refused to play at a lower level, refusing to turn up for training and spending the 2004-05 season on loan at Celtic and Southampton instead.

With his bridges at Molineux having been comprehensively burned and Wolves having not been promoted back to the Premier League, it made sense for the player to be sold on and Wolves doubled their money on him in selling him to Wigan for £3 million in August 2005.

Camara couldn't replicate an explosive first season with Wigan elsewhere in the Premier League

Wigan started the 2005-06 season among the favourites to be relegated straight back into the EFL.

But instead, after a relatively slow start with two narrow 1-0 defeats, they absolutely caught fire, with eight wins and a draw taking them to second place in the Premier League behind Chelsea by the time that teams broke up for the November international break.

This run didn't last. Wigan lost their first five matches after that international break and soon slipped from their lofty position.

But there was a silver lining in the form of a run in the League Cup which took them all the way to Wembley before losing 4-0 to Manchester United in the final, ending the season in 10th place in the Premier League.

But this was still an excellent return for a newly-promoted club, and Henri Camara played a full part in this success. He ended the season with 12 goals in 29 Premier League appearances, effectively connecting with Jason Roberts and scoring regularly, earning himself a degree of cult hero status among Latics fans.

The following season was more of a struggle. Roberts left for Blackburn Rovers in the summer of 2006 and Wigan struggled for much of the 2006-07 season, escaping relegation only by winning 2-1 at Sheffield United on the last day of the season and relegating the Blades on goal difference instead.

And Camara himself had a season of two halves. He scored a further six Premier League goals for Wigan by December, but a knee injury then disrupted him. He only made six further League appearances throughout the second half of the 2006-07 season and failed to score at all.

But Wigan were in for a shock at the end of that season, when Paul Jewell resigned on health grounds and replaced by Chris Hutchings, but Hutchings didn't fancy Camara and the player was sent out on loan to West Ham United.

This decision was one that didn't seem to work out for anybody. After winning two of their first three games, Wigan took just two points from their next nine games and Hutchings was sacked at the start of November and replaced by Steve Bruce. But things didn't go any better for Camara in East London. He only managed 10 appearances for the Irons all season and failed to score at all.

Bruce struck a more conciliatory tone with Camara, and throughout the first half of the 2008-09 season he played 17 times for the Latics. But he could only score two goals in that time and was sent on loan to Stoke in the January transfer window.

That didn't work out either, however. He could only manage four appearances for Stoke - three of which were from the bench - and at the end of the season he was released by Wigan, spending one season at Sheffield United before leaving England for Greece, where he'd play out the remainder of his career.

Arguably a scorer of great goals rather than a great scorer of goals, Henri Camara was central to Wigan Athletic's highest-ever League position.

Whether this was their greatest ever season is a matter of perspective. The 2012-13 season ended with them winning the FA Cup by beating Manchester City 1-0 in the final, but they only took one point from their final three league matches and were relegated shortly afterwards.