This time last week, I was trying hard not to think about the Bristol City game and distracting myself by building up to watching John Bramwell at the Old Courts. There’ll be a review of that gig somewhere at some point but suffice, for now, to say it was a decent distraction, the first entertainment I’d had in Wigan for months and a good night was had by all, if my hangover on the Saturday was anything to go by.
And so, as he sound tracked last weekend for me, it only seems fair to share the pleasure with you through the pretence of a match preview and some tenuous links…
Left Foot: Johnny Dangerously – Tearing it down
I’m going to start off with the bad stuff, to get it out of the way and this track from 1989’s “You, Me and the Alarm Clock” nods in a lovely assist from “Junk Culture” from the same record. Because, no matter how glad I am to see the back of the last four months, no matter how many times I say that there is always a point where you have to reverse a bad decision, the constant roller coaster of appointing managers, clearing out the old players and bringing in new ones is doing Wigan Athletic no good whatsoever.
We just can’t keep tearing down the club and rebuilding it. Apart from the instability and emotional drain; the stress and confusion it causes fans, it’s just too costly and after four years of parachute payments we’ve got little to show for it in terms of the club’s long term future, apart from five, potentially expensive, redundancy packages.
It’s right that David Sharpe hasn’t jumped to making a decision on a new manager right away, he needs to spend the next couple of months working out the answer to a different question. Why the last four years have been so turbulent for Wigan Athletic and how we stop the next five years being as bad?
Right Foot: I am Kloot – The same deep water as me
Managers, formations, styles of play. It appears, bizarrely, that these things can be very divisive for football fans. But whilst you’ve been busy falling out over whether Gary Caldwell should have been sacked or whether the way Warren Joyce had us playing was ever going to bear fruit* you might have missed the season passing us by. Our position in October meant we were a struggling side, being in pretty much exactly the same place in March means that we’re one false step away from crashing to relegation.
Yes, we can stay up, but not if we’re bickering about whether Barrow is the right man for the job, whether the players are up to it or whether we need 2, 3 or eight payers up top. Post mortems and debates about what happens next are secondary at the moment, and can wait until May, what we need right now is a bit of passion, a lot of togetherness and some of that old “backs to the wall” spirit.
if we don’t try we’ll never know, eh? And if we go down trying, then it’s got to be better than burying our heads in the DW pitch and hoping something good happens, right?
Header: John Bramwell – No Fear of Falling
Sin Miedo. I know that phrase strikes the living fear into some of you, but if we’re going to learn one thing for the last four months (sorry, I know I said no post mortems) it has to be that playing with the fear of losing doesn’t win you games. However you want to phrase it, the approach for the next nine games has to be different, we have to find a way to win games. Sin Miedo, I’ll leave it at that.
Or not, as the case may be. I’m going to leave you with a bonus track this week, because I can feel that some of you aren’t convinced. You’ve got a couple of options really. Sit back and see what happens or cast your fortunes to the wind, get behind the team and believe there’s a way. You’ve nothing to lose and you might even enjoy yourselves. As they say, the proof of the pudding is in the colouring of the peas, the consistency of the gravy and the greasiness of the chips, or is that a different conversation…
See you on the other side…
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