Up the Relegation battling Tics!

A relegation battle? This isn’t what we ordered was it! And we may not be in one yet but the next few games look particularly daunting and points may be at a premium somewhat.

Sheffield Wednesday are as ever sat perpetually on the edge of either greatness or financial meltdown, set against the backdrop of Human League, Henderson’s Relish and the brutalist Park Hill estate obviously.

They appear to be struggling a touch this season but Hillsborough is a tough place to go and as the small club coming up to this division, we are struggling to impose ourselves away from home in stark contrast to last year when we were wellying four or five past the likes of Swindon and Shrewsbury.

The only positive thing you can say about a midweek trip to Norwich is that it’s good to get it out of the way early in the season, if only to give your retinas chance to recover from all that garish yellow and green clobber on display at Carrow Road.

These are tricky games and even our next home game, Fulham looks tricky after that seem to have gotten their act together, perhaps since they got rid of a certain centre half. Sorry, that was mischievous!

So we need points urgently and that immediate stack of fixtures doesn’t exactly suggest an easy haul. Yet the games we have lost thus far have all been by the odd goal, which suggests a team that is perhaps a touch unlucky and naïve in the ways of the Championship.

I’m not one of those screaming for our young manager’s head just yet but there are a few things he needs to fix in order to turn those defeats into draws and then ultimately narrow wins in our favour.

The recent squad additions have no doubt been carried out to address exactly that and Gary Caldwell has shown himself to be quite adaptable in changing things when it was getting a bit tricky during our league one campaign.

You may be surprised to hear this from a devout footballing purist like myself but I’d humbly suggest that the need to “win ugly” is perhaps the priority right now and we can add back in the nice, aesthetically pleasing side to our game once the team and performances are a bit more settled.

Since last season we have turned from being bug guns to little Wigan again and it’s time little Wigan got back to doing what it does best – upsetting the odds!

First published in the Wigan Evening Post’s 12th Man column on Friday 9th September 2016

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