Time to play the broken record, put it on continual play for two weeks. Local derbies used to be the ones you really anticipated but under Keith Hill they often turn into miserable, often passionless affairs. Listening to his interviews prior to the games and then watching the majority of our displays forms the base of my opinion, he just doesn't do local derbies.
Last seasons game at Boundary Park is still raw in the memory, Andy Ritchie's views, both before and after the game on commentary showed his dismay at how we didn't seem up for the game (listening to Hills pre- match interview) despite it being a local derby, I agreed with him. As a supporters that game was pretty embarrassing, a terrible performance in a game that had us on the edge of the Play Offs.
Oldham are probably the worst team I have seen this season at Spotland and apart from Alessanders open goal miss we didn't really lay a glove on them. Showing them too much respect when they were there for the taking. God knows why?
Wigan and Bury at home this season,again the manager took the passion out of the fixtures and seemed hesitant to see the importance of the fixture to the supporters,he treated the games as just another fixture and we ended up with two insipid displays lacking in any attacking intent. Very easy games for both Wigan and Bury. In fact that's how Hilly approaches local derbies which results in the opposition seemingly being more up for the game and we play on the back foot as the opposition take the game by the scruff of the neck.
I would hope that now we are more or less safe Hilly could approach the Bury and Oldham games with a degree of enthusiasm and not ones where he is playing against two of his mates. Let's face it the table doesn't lie, bury are no better than us and are in fact pretty crap away from home, attack them and they collapse. We are currently in good form aren't we?
Oldham are fighting for their lives so let's learn from our recent game against Shrewsbury and start the game in the right fashion. No playing these two fixtures down, we are well capable of six points and let's hope we don't have to listen to any drivel about the fans looking at bury with envious eyes etc. If we lose, we lose,but it would nice to know we gave both games a bloody good go.
I don't know if Hilly plays the games down because he feels a bit of pressure competing against Flicker/local bragging rights,whatever the reason it's very rare we produce a good performance so he needs to change his approach. Being up for a local derby and knowing the team will be hell bent on securing the bragging rights should be a given, not even up for discussion... but it isn't. There's no need to play with caution now, let's get stuck into them. [Post edited 7 Mar 2016 16:30]
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