One last push Wigan

Nearly there Wigan, nearly there. One last push is all it will take, one last stretch through tired legs and those legs are tired now.

Don’t let anyone tell you this Wigan Athletic side aren’t deserving of promotion if it does indeed come this Saturday.

A team that had four contracted players at the start of the summer has already played a staggering 58 games in all competitions this season with another three left to go. No wonder they’ve looked exhausted in recent weeks.

Not only is this a side thrown together in the summer they’re also a side that has had to do without it’s number one striker and main summer capture for three quarters of the season due to the most horrific circumstances.

So cut those lads some slack if they look like they’re struggling, you and me would be too. Despite all of that, despite the games, despite the injuries, despite the loss of Charlie Wyke we’re nearly there.

Only the most optimistic of Wiganer’s would have predicted we would be in this position with three games of the season left.

Top of the table, four points ahead with three games remaining and it all in our hands? I was many of those at the start of the season who thought a late push for the play-offs was probably the best we could hope for.

I underestimated the job being done behind the scenes in our name, by that fantastic manager of ours and the ownership group who saw something in this ‘always punching above our weight’ football club from Lancashire.

We’ve struggled in the last week, no doubt about that – as mentioned above the players are running on empty as you would expect. So much has been left on the field this season.

The loss to Cambridge was disappointing and although we were under the cosh at Ipswich the late equaliser felt more like a late winner, especially as it moved us a further point forward with MK Dons and Rotherham both losing.

If one player embodies the Wigan Athletic spirit it’s Will Keane, so important to last season’s survival and even more important to our bid for glory this summer. I was delighted he managed to score a brace against his old club on Tuesday and what a brace it could be.

The scenes in that away end when that equaliser went in will live long in the memory.

I saw something interesting on the wall of a pub before the match at Portman Road – ‘Ipswich Town, the pride of Suffolk formed in 1878’ Ipswich Town one of the illustrious names of English football.

The club of Sir Alf Ramsey and of Sir Bobby Robson were formed a whole hundred years before Wigan Athletic had been voted into the football league.

So, when the Ipswich net nerds tell us just how terrible our support is for taking over 400 people to a game 240 miles away, re-arranged from Easter Monday to a Tuesday night at late notice remember we’re on a level playing field and we’ve achieved success in the last twenty-five years that clubs like Ipswich could only dream of.

Leave the negativity at the door on Saturday afternoon, remember the previous promotion seasons – in 2004/05 we stumbled in the last few weeks with draws against Forest, QPR and most famously that horrific game at Deepdale against Preston. A nervier 0-0 you will struggle to find.

In recent years, the same happened in the title winning seasons under Caldwell and Cook but we still got the job done and I believe we’ll still get the job done this time around.

We may have stumbled in the last three matches but so have those around us, Rotherham who were running away with the league a month ago now look like they can’t buy a win. MK Dons who looked so dangerous four weeks ago have struggled to keep pace with us.

It’s all still in our hands, hopefully it comes on Saturday but if it doesn’t don’t get disheartened, we will get there.

A lot of wrongs could be righted on Saturday afternoon, less than two years after the cruellest of blows we could return to the league we should never have left.

Paul Cook alongside Leam Richardson had assembled one of the most exciting Wigan Athletic sides in over a decade, a side that could well have seen us reach the play-offs in normal times, but we know that the summer of 2020 was not normal by any stretch.

Still time is a great healer and although the pain of that horrific nine months will never leave us, we can reach redemption this Saturday.

Be loud and be proud Wigan.

Sean Livesey

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