It’s been a bruising couple of weeks for John Sheridan’s Wigan Athletic.
Let’s take a look at Saturday’s trip to Charlton shall we? The scene of where things fell apart last season (well if we ignore Stanley Choi, Au Yeung and the EFL that is) comparing the performance at Charlton with that of Crewe is like comparing night and day. Charlton was like the other committed performances we’ve seen from Wigan Athletic so far this season and Latics really should have left the Capital with at least a point, if not all three.
As I write this Latics have been charged the Football Association for failing to control our players in the 83rd minute of Saturday’s match. Difficult to remember if this followed the referee failing to award Latics a second stonewall penalty of the match or if it was when he denied a perfectly good Joe Garner goal that the assistant referee had seen no issue with. I for one thought the protests were muted considering the refereeing display we had been treated to.
Charlton will do well this season, they’ve managed to retain a big portion of their squad from last season and have added really well. Whilst their own ownership struggles are at an end with the arrival of Thomas Sandgaard, whilst ours continue.
An initial period of two to three weeks was envisaged for the Spanish takeover of Wigan Athletic to be completed, we’re now past that mark and no further updates have been forthcoming. Rumours were abound of issues with the deal at the weekend. Seemingly not substantiated rumours but you can see exactly why Wiganer’s are getting worried.
Once again there is very little we can do but wait, and pray that the deal to secure the future of our football club passes before much longer.
Back on the pitch Latics faced Peterborough on Tuesday evening, for the first 20 minutes of each half you would have been hard pressed to know who was the side at the bottom of the table and who was at the top. Sadly football is about 90 minutes and Latics inability to capitalise on some excellent possession and chances in the Peterborough half meant that yet another defensive lapse by Latics went punished and led to Peterborough taking all three points.
We’re not playing badly by any stretch but if we’re not careful we’ll be cut off before too long. The senior players know they’ll be playing more football this season than they have for a long while with the nature of the condensed season and the fact that whilst we are still in administration we are carrying a relatively small squad.
Matty Palmer was impressive on his debut and hopefully his arrival can bolster the engine room and allow Lee Evans to dictate the attacking side of our game that bit more. Luckily in this league you don’t have time to focus on the defeats as another game is right around the corner.
We’ve had a punishing introduction back to life in League One facing many of the sides that we expect to be competing at the top of the league come May. The next ten days see us face three sides that won’t be promotion favourites and hopefully that gives us time to re-set and pick up as many points as possible.
Keep the faith with the lads, it’s a cobbled together team doing their best and hopefully Saturday can see us getting back on track against Plymouth – we all need a lift at the moment.
Sean Livesey
SUBSCRIBE TO THE PIE AT NIGHT PODCAST
We promise you that it’s easier to subscribe to the podcast so you don’t have to rely on us to remind you when a new episode comes out.
Apple sorts can find it on iTunes here – https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-pie-at-night-podcast/id1097853442?mt=2
If you prefer a different podcast app then just search for “The Pie at Night Podcast”.
You can also find us on Stitcher, here – http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-pie-at-night-pocast/the-pie-at-night-podcast
If you’re that way out, you can find and subscribe to our RSS feed here – http://feeds.feedburner.com/thepieatnight
And if you just want to take pot luck then you can find all our episodes on our Soundcloud page
