Leaving the DW Stadium today a Wigan fan commented 'they have to be the worst team in the Championship ever. They might go the whole season without getting a point'. Well, of course, factually Fulham are the worst team in the league but we know where he was coming from. Again there were signs in the second half of what Riga is building, but, in truth, the game should have been dead and buried by then.

With so much going on off the pitch, and Owen Oyston must either have cloth ears or a thick skin not to have taken notice of the vocal away end today, sometimes it's easy to look at what the manager is doing. Today's starting line up, even if he hasn't got in the players he's wanted, was bemusing to say the least. Playing Jeffrey Rentmeister, who achieved one of the worst debuts I've seen in a tangerine shirt - and that takes some doing, in front of the back four and sticking with Francois Zoko up front ahead of Miller or Ranger seemed a strange option. Indeed it could well have been our eventual downfall as the Seasiders failed to get out of their own half for much of the first 45 minutes.

The problem in the first half was we lacked width, creativity, pace, an instinctive striker and the ability to pass a ball! David Perkins had an awful 90 minutes, the back four again looked exposed, we should be thankful we have such a decent keeper in Joe Lewis, who can take little fault for the goal and the only positive from the first half was the performance of Jon Lundstramm, his best match in a Blackpool shirt. The introduction of Miller and Ranger gave us many more options, and was maybe an admittance by Riga the positioning of Rentmeister was a disaster, but we still lacked that killer pass or skilful move that was needed. There were occasional spells where we passed the ball round nicely but we never really challenged Scott Carson in the Wigan goal.

The goal which undid the Seasiders was another where we only have ourselves to blame for not closing down Oriol Riera, who saw a space in our defence and exposed it. Ranger came close and Zenjov in the first half had a decent chance but 1 shot on target the whole game speaks volumes (although ironically Wigan only had 2!). So, it's the week off that Riga has wanted and hopefully it's the week we get Orlandi fit and a work permit for Cubero because this side is still lacking that spark and creativity that hopefully these players can bring. Last season fans were checking the record books for when we'd last had such a good start to the season, this year it's probably best not to check when we've had such a bad start.

Photo: Action Images

td53 added 13:22 - Aug 24 Zenov looked to have the odd good idea but sadly his body didn't respond quickly enough to his brain. I thought we looked like a league 1 side. Couldn't really fault the players, I didn't even think rentmeister was that awful, just looked to be doing a job completely alien. It was a complete lack of spark. I thought Tony McManaman looked the most creative player and that summed up the problem for me. I agree, a lot depends on the two lads to come in. Otherwise I can't see us getting much anywhere.

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