So January, I always find it a long month after the excitement of the Festive Holidays, made even longer by the dull Wigan weather & of course the dull football on the pitch.
But something happened with Malky’s Half Time Team talk against Blackburn? The 2nd half for Wigan Athletic we saw a spark, something different! Something instead of the “couldn’t be arsed” or “roll over & die” approaches we’ve seen recently, we saw some fight.
Now it meant Wigan pulled 1 back against Blackburn to gain a valuable point, okay we’d prefer 3, but we may be able to get those 3 against Huddersfield this weekend.
As for the TNS office, not much to report, the usual January ‘Blues’ mean the only news is my own jump from the ‘Darkside’ back to the ‘Fence People’, but it’s a positive step that Luke is happy with.
It’s the 27th game in the Sky Bet Championship. Wigan Athletic will be playing of course Huddersfield Town at the DW Stadium; match will be played on Saturday the 24th January, with a 3pm kick off. This weekend’s fixtures will of course be reduced with it also being the 4th Round of the FA Cup, so Saturday only sees 4 Championship games.
Wigan even though they picked up a point last weekend, still stand in 23rd place in the table, Huddersfield are 17th in the League. Top of the table are Bournemouth with 51 points.
Looking at recent form coming into this game, though we’ve seen slight improvement, Wigan is still languishing 20th in the form table, with Huddersfield in 14th place:
- Wigan P 6 W 1 D 1 L 4 (Win against Leeds & a Draw against Blackburn)
- Huddersfield P 6 W 2 D 1 L 3 (Wins against Bolton, Watford & a Draw against Rotherham)
Earlier this season we covered previous history in the mid September Match Preview. That game saw both teams grind out a 0-0 draw on a Tuesday evening. It meant overall between the 2, we’ve now seen 28 games, of which Wigan have won 8, Huddersfield 13 and 7 draws. Thanks to Cockney Latic for the Head to head info.
Referee from the Game will be Stephen Martin, his assistants will be Simon Clayton and Ken Haycock, the 4th bloke will be Matthew Donohue.
Now the last time we saw Stephen, was Christmas 2013, he refereed the Boxing Day game at the DW stadium against Birmingham City. The match ended 0-0; he issued 2 yellow cards to The Perch & our Winger Beausejour. He also issued a shiny Red card to Lingard in the 62 minute, not that Wigan took advantage of playing 10 men for a 1/3rd of the game.
For Huddersfield, in the same season Stephen was seen in Blackburn, again looking after a game that ended 0-0. This September match saw him issue 2 Yellow Cards, ironically both to substitutes, Williamson & Gobern.
Team News, on from the Blackburn game that didn’t see Wigan’s Cowie or Ramis feature on the bench; we’ll have to see if they can return?
Other hindrances to Malky’s 11 will be the ongoing drama that is the selling of Callum McManaman, who ironically has served his suspension, so is available to Malky. The protracted deal with WBA is now entering its 3rd bid; assume we’ll not see McManaman this weekend?
Shaun Maloney’s deal with Leicester collapsed last week after he couldn’t reach personal terms & did come off the bench at half time against Blackburn. He has been linked with Chicago Fire, no not the NBC programme, but the MLS team, though Shaun has stated he wants to stay in Blighty.
Team News for Huddersfield has seen them strengthen their defence with David Edgar coming in on loan from Birmingham. Their last outing, a 2-0 defeat away to Boro, saw Chris Powell having to make 2 early substitutions for Hogg & Vaughan, so we’ll have to see how their week has gone in making the journey across to Wigan?
The Bookies see the game, well they are picking up on the positive 2nd half from Wigan! With 39% believe it’ll be a Home win for Wigan, 34% believe Huddersfield will take 3 points home to Yorkshire & the remaining 27% believe we’ll see a draw.
William Hill this evening, are quoting 23/20 for Wigan, 12/5 for Huddersfield & 23/10 for the draw. Also if you fancy a flutter, William is also offering 25/1 for Wigan to win 1-0 and James McClean to score.
My thoughts on the game, well if you’ve seen other Championship mid week results, both Brighton & Leeds picked up unexpected 3 points. So it’s stretched the gap to these teams to 8 points and Wigan is still at least 2 wins away from at least getting out of the relegation zone.
So you can imagine this game is very important for Wigan. I’m hoping we can see the same positive 2nd half against Blackburn, for a full 90 minutes against Huddersfield. Wigan simply need to start picking up the points.
COME ON WIGAN
Andy
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