Love a trip to the Fylde Coast me

Arsenal, West Ham, Chesterfield, Gillingham – a series of clubs you would never normally lump together but all have something in common and after Tuesday we can add Fleetwood Town to that list.

All have been 2-0 up and flying in games before Wigan Athletic staged Lazarus like comebacks to eventually triumph.

All of those victories mattered for so many different reasons – the Arsenal & West Ham wins went a long way to helping us retain our Premier League status whilst the wins over Chesterfield and Gillingham kept us in the hunt for promotion back in 2016.

But what of the 2021 edition of the great comeback? Tuesday’s have been a bizarre outlier in this season for Wigan Athletic, awesome on a Saturday. Like strangers on a Tuesday, the Wycombe and Bolton games back in August the exception to the rule. Since then be it in the league or the cup we’ve struggled to replicate anything like our Saturday form under the lights.

Many Latics fans would be forgiven for thinking here we go again as Fleetwood scored their second from the penalty spot on Tuesday evening.

But if we’re being truthful Latics weren’t playing badly, we had dominated the match since Fleetwood got their first. From a soft free kick that the referee had originally ignored until his linesman urged him to call it back.

Latics could have scored three goals in the first half and no one would have batted an eye lid such was Leam Richardson’s side dominance. A fantastic effort from Tendayi Darikwa followed up by chances from Charlie Wyke and Will Keane that the Fleetwood keeper did well to keep out.

The penalty like Fleetwood’s first came out of nowhere and all of a sudden Latics were looking down the barrel of a defeat, on a Tuesday again. But this side is definitely building something special.

A change in personnel with Gwion Edwards coming on and a switch back to a more familiar formation was all it needed for Latics to click. Tom Bayliss who is quickly becoming one of the first names on the team sheet drove the lads forward and set up Callum Lang for what looked an impossible goal from a tight angle.

With one you thought we may be able to rescue a point, which considering the Tuesday hoodoo would have been welcome. But as the fantastic Charlie Wyke produced an amazing assist for Will Keane to score an equaliser you sensed there was more to come.

As I said earlier, we weren’t playing badly but with Edwards introduction we went from not playing badly to looking utterly fantastic.

The theatrics from the Fleetwood players had kept the away end busy during the second half, at one point Fleetwood defender James Hill decided that he would have a nice lie down with no one else around him.

This coincided with Latics earning a corner and Hill being off the pitch as it was taken. Well imagine my surprise when the aforementioned Mr Hill was stood on the touchline as Curtis Tilt planted a fantastic header in to Fleetwood goal to complete a more than deserved comeback.

There’s something special about this side, I keep saying it but look how they fought back on Tuesday. Look at how they’ve equalled a club record of consecutive away victories, look at how they’ve settled in to one of the divisions top sides in such a relatively short time.

There’s a long way to go in this season of course but how important could that victory be on Tuesday night? Psychologically it’s huge – it means we now sit top of the league going in to the international break and although Plymouth can overtake us we managed to make ground on those around us who dropped points on Tuesday.

We also managed to get that Tuesday monkey off our backs, no doubt helped by 1100 well lubricated voices.

We’ve had some great moments under that terrace at Fleetwood, a come back win at Christmas 2015. That promotion sealing demolition in 2018 and now this. I love a trip to the Fylde coast me.

Sean Livesey

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