Wigan sit bottom of the table coming into this weekend’s crucial match at QPR, but have performed miracle escapes from these situations before. Will this season prove to be a step too far?

Overview

For Wigan the situation looks bleakest, because even Blackburn have shown willing to go out and buy the likes of Scott Dann to survive. But if the other clubs at the bottom of the table are already hopefully writing them off as definitely gone, they may like to cast their mind back to this time last year when they looked similarly dead and buried but won three and drew two of their final six matches to survive at the death at the expense of West Ham and Birmingham.

The problem is Wigan, and to some extent Blackburn, have survived to this point on the Gretna model. They’re here in the top division because one rich supporter wanted them to be. The problem with this model is you’re at the whim of that one man’s moods, desires, health and age. At Gretna millionaire Brooks Mileson, who’d previously provided financial support to more than 70 non-league football clubs, bankrolled them to the SPL at such a frightening pace they ended up playing home games at Motherwell’s ground. Sadly Mileson passed away after a heart attack in 2008 (found dead in his duck pond apparently) and with him went Gretna – already in administration and subsequently dissolved. Rushden and Diamond went the same way this summer after their original benefactor Max Griggs lost interest.

Wigan’s likeable chairman Dave Whelan took a Third Division side playing in one of the Football League’s worst stadiums at Springfield Park and made it the Premiership team we see before us today. Initially things went well, Wigan have been at this level since 2005 and have survived, and sometimes prospered, despite being everybody’s tip for the bottom spot every season. But Wigan’s ticket sales for this Saturday’s crunch game at QPR (less than 200 at press time) tell you that this is in fact a lower division club punching above its weight because one man wants it to. Much the same can be said of QPR, although there is at least a solid support base and top flight history to our outfit.

My abiding memory of Dave Whelan comes from a radio programme broadcast from the JJB Stadium (as it was then) on the eve of their first Premiership match with Chelsea back in 2005. Sky and the likes have long since lost interest in the Latics, no doubt seeing their low levels of support and therefore audience figures as a burden on their schedules, but at the time there was a tremendous amount of patronising coverage about “little old Wigan” in the Premiership.

Mark Pougatch was chairing this live discussion from the JJB and was approaching it in much the same way as the Loftus Road marketing team approached this summer at QPR. One question after another along the lines of “oooh won’t it be exciting to have Man Utd and Wayne Rooney down here?” flowed fourth until Whelan could stand it no longer. Politely, but firmly, he told Pougatch he wasn’t really interested in Wayne Rooney and was actually looking forward to seeing his new signing Henri Camara in action. The Wigan fans in the audience leapt to their feet and applauded, and rightly bloody so. No doubt Whelan would have been as disgusted as we were had he been shown QPR’s promotional material this summer, which included adverts for tickets in the Evening Standard that sported pictures of Chelsea’s Fernando Torres.

Blackburn provide hope that there can be life after your sugar daddy has gone. Although even Rovers have now fallen into the hands of a gang of mad chicken farmers. Whelan talks of handing control of the club to his 21-year-old grandson which sounds like a plan cooked up by an Italian cruise liner captain. There’s starting to be a bit of a feeling of “nice while it lasted” about it all to be honest. But, their escape from relegation last season was absolutely miraculous and performances and results have improved markedly of late.

Interview

You were fairly optimistic about Wigan's prospects when we spoke in August, things haven't gone terribly well since then. How has the season been so far and what do you put the team's struggles down to?

The end of last season and the close season looked quite promising for us, but performances on the pitch haven’t reaped the rewards they deserved, mainly down to our inability to score goals. If we can find a goal scorer, the rest would look after itself and we would start winning those games that we have dominated this season instead of losing them.

Are you confident of avoiding relegation? If so, why? If not, what effect would a return to the Championship have on the club?

I wouldn’t say I am confident of avoiding relegation, but as in the previous response, if we start bagging those goals, we will steer ourselves clear. The club is set up in a way so that relegation would not effect us greatly from a financial point of view, from the fans point of view we would get to see our team win a few more games, get referees who aren’t blinded by the size of opposition and we would probably increase our gates.

Is everybody still behind Roberto Martinez?

I think we are in a position that whatever happens we are going to finish the season with him. He hasn’t managed to deliver the results that he was promising, but we have to be realistic and see that he has managed the last three seasons with an ever decreasing budget and so pulling in big players will not happen, we have to find up and coming talent.

What do you make of Dave Whelan's assertion that he may hand control of the club on to his 21 year old grandson?

There isn’t much we can do about it to be fair, what the hell a 21 year old can do in that position is beyond me and I can only assume that Dave Whelan will still be on hand for as long as he is alive to guide the youngster.

What would you like to see the club do in what remains of the transfer window? Where does the team need strengthening and who would you like to see come in or leave?

We need an out and out goal scorer and strength in the defence. Three players could very well turn the season on its head.

Who have been your best and worst players so far this season?

The best has been Mohamed Diame, but he is sadly now away for the African Nations Cup with Senegal. The worst has been centre back Gary Caldwell.

Manager

Martinez has said since arriving at Wigan that it would take three years to implement his style on the team and get the players he wanted but, admittedly in the face of a tightening budget, here we are three years down the line and Wigan are still bottom of the table. There’s a sense that nobody could do any better, that this outcome has been inevitable for a while. With that in mind should Martinez have upset a club he loves a second time and just gone? I’d be surprised to see him considered for jobs of that calibre again this summer if Wigan are to be relegated.

Martinez has always been a little unconventional. A run of the mill lower league Spanish footballer as a younger man, he became part of an unlikely trio of imports from his homeland at lowly Wigan Athletic. The Wigan he Jesus Seba and Isidro Diaz joined back in 1995 was a very different proposition to the one he now manages - firmly placed in the bottom division, with a ground that included a grass bank in between the upper and lower terraces behind one of the goals that would turn into an entertaining mud slide once rain was added.

Seba and Diaz impressed briefly, but didn't settle and stay to the extent that Martinez did and continues to do – 16 years on and he's still here, now as a manager. After Wigan, where he made the thick end of 200 appearances, he joined Swansea during some of their darkest times when they were threatening to drop out of the league altogether. In 2003 he was the captain as the Swans avoided relegation to the Conference on the final day of the season placing him firmly in the hearts of a second unfashionable English club. Spells with Motherwell, Walsall and Chester were worked in there as well but it was his time with the Latics and Swans that defined him as a player in this country and his time in charge of both those clubs since has marked him out as a sought after managerial talent.

Through sound, ambitious management Swansea have made their way from bottom division to top – a path previously worn by Wigan thanks to the financing of Dave Whelan. The ascent in South Wales had already begun when Martinez returned as boss. Our old charge Kenny Jackett led them from fourth tier to third and consolidated them there, by the time Martinez replaced him the Swans had moved from the crusty old Vetch Field into the purpose built Liberty Stadium as well. The stage was set for Martinez to push them onto the next level and consolidate them in the Championship.

Not that the Swansea fans seem overly grateful for that. He was given a hot reception when he returned there with Wigan earlier this season. Comments that Martinez made after Swansea won League One at Gillingham, to the effect that he would stay as long as they wanted him and would have to be carried out of the place in a box if not, came back to haunt him because he forgot to add the clarifying "unless Wigan approach me" remark to it. He later confirmed that he wouldn't have left Swansea for anybody but Wigan , but the damage was done and the hard work he did while he was there is now often overlooked in the face of perceived betrayal.

Martinex's time at Swansea was no mere continuation of the work that Jackett had done. That trendsetting nature of his came to the fore to such an extent that it inspired our own Ian Holloway to abandon his on, previously much criticised, version of what LFW has come to term 'channel ball' in favour of the all out fluid attacking we saw from Blackpool last season. Holloway said he was inspired by Martinez 's Swansea side while he was out of work after his debacle at Leicester and it bore immediate results when he combined it with his own unique man management style.

Essentially the main difference between the traditional English style and the Martinez way is the 'out ball'. When no other options are on, and often as a first port of call for sides like Stoke, English teams tend to knock a long straight ball in behind the opposition defence with the intention of turning them round and winning throw ins and, if they're really lucky and Damien Delaney is playing, corners. The Swansea 'out ball' under Martinez went across the field, rather than down it, to a winger who the Spaniard insisted must stay tight to the touchline at all times. It made Swansea an incredibly wide team, and the previous English wisdom was that it would leave them open to attack – Holloway was always reluctant to pick Lee Cook and Gareth Ainsworth on opposite flanks you may recall. It worked though, and Nathan Dyer went from chavy nightclub thief to sought after Premiership winger because of it.

But there’s only so much one man can do without serious money to spend in the modern day Premiership. Not only do Wigan have to cope with a lower budget than most, they also have to sell their best player each season. When they first arrived in the Premiership they consistently surprised teams, particularly with the physical and mobile strikers they used to pick up. Currently picking between Franco Di Santo and Conor Sammon tells you everything about their current position as a club. Martinez will need a miracle even bigger than the one he got from them last season to save them now.

Scout Report

Admittedly they were only playing against a QPR side boasting a frightening back four of Danny Gabbidon, Bruno Perone, Fitz Hall and Clint Hill but that attacking trio looked excellent against us back in August and Rangers struggled to control them. The problem is the term I used at the start; “supporting cast.” Like people who follow Oldham Athletic around the country the deep lying attackers at Wigan often find there is nothing much further forward worth supporting.

The key to making this system work, as we have demonstrated ourselves over the past two seasons, I having a specialist lone striker at the pinnacle of the formation who is adept at bringing the ball down, holding it up and then feeding it intelligently to the runners from deep. Last season Rangers had Heidar Helguson playing some of the best football of his career and at Championship level there were few better at the lone striker role than the Icelandic international. Eight goals so far this season, in a struggling team, shows that he’s settled into the top flight pretty well too but QPR’s failure to find a younger, Premiership standard version of Helguson is one of their key failures this season.

Rangers have only scored 19 Premiership goals this season and only one team has managed less. That team is Wigan and when you look at the players they have utilised as the lone striker it’s not hard to see why. Franco Di Santo may have scored twice against us at the DW Stadium but he has managed just two more goals since, in 15 appearances, and he now has an unenviable Premier League record of just six goals in 85 appearances for three clubs. This doesn’t necessarily preclude him from scoring against us on Saturday, but this guy is absolute pony. I wouldn’t want to rely on him as my lone striker in League One never mind the Premiership. He may have scored twice in August but it still only boosted his grade to six in the LFW match report, without his two deflected strikes he’d have been looking at a four or less given the quality of his all round play which was lamentable throughout.

But other options are thin on the ground. Rodallega has misfired this season and missed an absolute sitter when I saw them play at Wolves earlier this term (when the formation was more 4-3-3) which leaves only young Scottish striker Conor Sammon, recently harshly sent off against Man Utd. Sammon is 24 years old and, with respect, isn’t good enough for the Premiership. Buying players from Scotland is like buying your meat from Lidl – occasionally you find Henrik Larsson and boast at the dinner party how wonderful that grotty little German supermarket really is, but mostly you end up with Kris Boyd. Sammon came from Kilmarnock and Wigan beat off competition from Scunthorpe United to get him which I think says it all. They have scored just 18 times this season, just eight times in away games. Top scorer is shared between two players with four goals. Only eight players have a goal to their names this season.

There’s plenty to admire in the deep lying midfield positions as well. Former R’s loanee Ben Watson keeps threatening to really set the Premiership alight and Rangers were very careful to push Shaun Derry high up the field to restrict his influence in the first meeting between these sides this season. That worked well but alongside him Mohamed Diame then stole the show with an excellent performance that dominated the QPR midfield – he is now away at the African Nations Cup with Senegal.

In defence it’s the same story as up front – too few players of adequate Premiership quality. And another Scot, Gary Caldwell, incurring the wrath of the Wigan fans. When will managers learn and start ignoring that cesspit of football north of the border for good? All of which leaves eccentric goalkeeper Ali Al-Habsi, who lists former QPR goalkeeper John Burridge as his hero and mentor, rather overworked at times. Al-Habsi won the club’s Player of the Year award last season and is highly likely to do so again this but my advice is follow in on every shot. Superb shot stopper though he undoubtedly is, not a lot sticks to him – it’s all parried away one way or the other.

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Photo: Action Images

Antti_Heinola added 12:53 - Jan 20 Great report Clive, really enjoyed it. Strong analysis of Wigan. I think you're spot on that eventually they will fall away again - it's just not a football town. One thing, though - what's with this spelling of Whelan as 'Whelen'? Very odd!
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jo_qpr63 added 13:29 - Jan 20 Victor Moses is a good tricky player but no end product. I think we will win 3-0. C'mon u Super hoops.
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Northernr added 15:15 - Jan 20 Victor Moses' end product is absolutely fine, it's just ending up on the boot and head of League One quality strikers.
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jo_qpr63 added 20:53 - Jan 20 He'll probably score and get an assist tommorow.3-2 QPR then.
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MrSheen added 21:13 - Jan 20 I don't think Whelan's too popular with the town's RL fans. He stole their Central Park ground to flog to Tesco and subsidise the building of the football team.
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Northernr added 23:52 - Jan 20 Even the most died in the wool Wigan RL fan would struggle to argue they'd be better off at Central Park. They haven't done too badly out of it getting the JJB/DW Stadium considering the much smaller and more modest grounds Warrington, Saints and probably shortly Cas and Wakefield have put up without going in with a football team.
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MrSheen added 09:38 - Jan 21 I don't disagree, but they would have kept the money in their club and wouldn't be in the position they are in now, unwelcome tenants with their landlord's governing body wanting them evicted. The might even have terraces! Whelan's not the philanthropist the football media make him out to be, his folly has sucked funds out of the one thing the town has to be proud of. With all respect to Cas, Wakefield, etc, Wigan RL wouldn't have a small and modest stadium.

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