Apologies in advance if you’ve turned up expecting the usual dose of balanced, insightful analysis, some thoughts on how Latics might go about beating Blackburn or just a general, upbeat ‘we’ll be right’ kind of missive. There’s not so much of that around here, not this week anyway.
That the bottom of the Championship has started to grab my attention as much as our own position tells its own story, but don’t get the impression that I’ve written Latics chances of survival off, just yet. My problem at the minute is that I can’t see us getting anything off a team who have developed a hex over Latics both home and away ever since that FA cup tie many moons ago.
Not that I’m superstitious or anything, bogey teams only exist in the mind after all. There are very good reasons why Mark Hughes’ men should be odds on to come away with another 3 points for Christmas, this year.
I don’t want to get into a debate about whether they have a better side than Latics have. The fact is that, on that score, Blackburn, and teams like them, should be in our sights as ones we could beat. Yes, they’ve got some very good players, but they’ve also got some very average ones as well.
The major difference is simple, attitude. Whenever Blackburn play they take a ‘never say die’ approach. If needs be they knuckle down and work hard for what they get and if that doesn’t work then they’ll fight for it.
There was a time when Latics had a similar approach, but even then Blackburn proved they could out do us. That made for a corker of a New Year’s Eve clash but if the ‘stand up and be counted’ team of our first season in this division lost out, there’s no reason to suspect that their ‘couldn’t fight their way out of a paper bag’ counterparts could manage any better. Even if they are more able players.
Last week couldn’t really have gone any worse for Latics, and with the big boys entertaining each other this Sunday, there’s plenty of scope for things to get worse. I could be positive and say that whatever happens we won’t be bottom of the pile on Saturday night, but we could be equal 19th and as anyone will tell you – that’s joint bottom.
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