Latics 1-0 West Ham
Saturday 12th September 2009
It’s a bit late to be writing the match report for Saturday’s game, but I guess that’s the price of having a life too deal with. To cut a long story after the horse has bolted, massive hangovers, a dinner party that I’m not even invited to, first days at nursery and crazy times at work have kept me from looking at my computer screen for any real length of time over the last fortnight. Choosing a Friday night on the pop over Saturday afternoon at Robin Park won’t have helped my writer’s block on this one either.
I was hoping that someone else would come along with a match report to save me baring my eternal shame over not going to the game, but that’s life and here I stand awaiting the rotten fruit to mark me out as a lesser fan. Do your worst, at least I had a good time.
I can only remember choosing beer over football on one other occasion (I’ve been lucky and not had to chose that often) and that was a game against Chester where they had to play in our away kit and a loan player by the name of Keith Gillespie scored 3 in a 6-3 victory. I’d travelled back from working in Wakefield, primarily to see my new born nephew, but with football on my mind. I landed in Wigan with too many bags and not enough time to get to Shevvy and back. It was time to get imaginative or get a pint, ad the latter won. I was just too tired to come up with anything else.
So if missing that 6-3 goes some way to explaining my pathological fear of missing a home game, this one did a fair bit to help. I know that it’s never the same sat in front of the tele and the banging head and flashing lights won’t of helped, but it was hardly the most flowing of affairs now, was it?
Don’t get me wrong, it was a good, hard fought win against a side that isn’t quite as loathsome as last year, but still features Scott Parker so doesn’t quite make it onto the Christmas card list just yet. Latics even played some very good stuff at times but for large parts it was a game between the centre halves and central midfielders and they’re rarely nice to watch are they?
Whilst we’re here, it’s the perfect opportunity to give a couple of players a pat on the back. First off for Hugo Rodallega, for getting off a plane and putting in a hard shift within 24 hours, but more so for scoring the type of goal that has been sadly lacking from our play over the last few years. It were a scrappy one, but if he gets 15 more like it between now and May no one will be complaining.
Secondly it’s 10 out of 10 and a big smiley face for our Titus. In week where the media have all but cleaned Carlton Cole’s genitalia with their collective tongues (you see, they still can’t admit that Emile Heskey has his uses) it was class to see how easily Bramble kept him quiet. Jolean Lescott? Give me a break.
There wasn’t much call for a ‘good’ performance out of this game mind, things were getting to the “where do our next points come from?” stage with Arsenal and Chelsea. Whether it was a genuine must win game is debatable, but the phrase ‘a welcome three’ points has rarely been so apt.
Six points from five games is a fairly safe start, it won’t attract too much attention and in retrospect makes the horror mongers of a couple of weeks back look a little bit daft. Hopefully it buys Bobby enough time to get the team gelled and focused on hitting the ground running in time for the Hull game.
Not that we should be writing the next two games off. After grinding out he points against West Ham, Arsenal and Chelsea become more about how well the team performs and how much they can learn as opposed to how many points they can bag. Points would be good but, in the same way as mushy peas are with a chippy tea, they’re not essential.
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