 Thursday, 4th Apr 2013 21:42 by Clive Whittingham Wigan look set for another impressive late run of results to preserve their Premier League status and further the reputation of manager Roberto Martinez. But potential suitors may query why this happens so often. OverviewFor Wigan, the now annual great escape looks to be on yet again. A home win against Norwich last time out – unfortunately gift wrapped by QPR’s former favourite Lee Camp – was their fifth in six outings in all competitions and lifted them out of the bottom three. The Latics only have 30 points, the same as third bottom Aston Villa, but such is their propensity to rally late in a campaign and escape that few fans of the other teams at the bottom of the table are even taking them into account. Ask fans of Rangers, Reading, Aston Villa, Sunderland and the other strugglers which three teams they think they can climb above and few will say Wigan. The standard response seems to be “Wigan will get out of it, they always do.” Last season’s escape was one of the most extraordinary the top division has ever seen. Wigan lost nine consecutive games through September and October and went another ten without a win through the Christmas and New Year period. They were so far adrift with three months of the season left that salvation could only been foreseen with a prolonged toke on a very potent peace pipe. The run of results they put together to achieve it was exceptional – seven wins from their final nine games including wins against Champions League chasers Man Utd, Arsenal and Newcastle. And yet come August it was back to the same old prolonged runs of games without victory – two wins from 13 through November to January – and bumping along the bottom of the table. The rally is now underway again and unlike 12 months ago the punters are with them. Each victory at the DW Stadium is met with a blast of I’m a Believer by The Monkees and it’s not just the Wigan fans who assume their team will be fine after all. There have always been these perennial survivors in the Premier League. When the league was first formed Coventry and Southampton staged miraculous get aways on an annual basis. The Saints avoided relegation from the inaugural Premier League in 1992/93 by a single point and then stayed up by the same margin or less in three of the next four campaigns. Coventry were three points away from the drop in that first season and five points away in 1994/95. Thereafter they survived by a point or less for two consecutive seasons. In a way Wigan are simply fulfilling a long held tradition – escaping on the final day on two occasions and requiring big winning runs at the end of last season and this to avoid the drop. The working theory at LFW Towers for this survival pattern relates to Martinez’s style of play. At Swansea he pioneered a progressive passing style totally alien to these shores. The ‘out ball’ for his teams when in trouble went width ways, across the field, to a winger on the far touchline, rather than down the line behind an opposition full back with the intention of turning him around as was the previous British norm. He has carried that on at Wigan but as finances dictate that his best players each season must be sold – Antonio Valencia, Charles N’Zogbia, Victor Moses, Hugo Rodallega and others have all been picked off – it takes times for the newcomers to settle into what the manager wants from them. The situation is exacerbated by Wigan’s finances dictating they shop in far flung corners of the world – often obscure Latin and Central American countries – for cheap imports who take time to settle into the top flight at all, never mind a unique style of play they’re not used to.
That may well have some truth in it but Wigan actually improved their team after last season’s great escape. In attack, for instance, Arouna Kone arrived having scored 15 goals in 34 games for La Liga side Levante last season. Having relied heavily on the less than prolific goalscoring of Franco Di Santo (seven goals in 33 appearances last season, five in 29 so far this) last term the arrival of Kone looked like a colossal step forward and a reason to believe a season of struggle need not necessarily ensue. But it has, and that leaves Martinez with some tough questions to answer regardless of the outcome this season. The Spaniard is impossible to dislike – the way he speaks, the way he played his football, the way his teams play, his philosophy and ideas about the game, his age, his looks and plenty else besides make him everybody’s favourite other manager in the league. And it’s probably fair to say they’d have been relegated by now without him. It puts him in high demand when other clubs sack their own less inspirational bosses and as Wigan are a selling club with players he looks highly obtainable. Loyalty to Dave Whelan has seen him repel advances from Aston Villa and Liverpool over the last two summers, but that will not continue forever – after all he said they’d have to take him out of Swansea “in a box” before then leaving, very much still alive, when Whelan picked up the phone. Wigan’s poor starts to campaigns and spectacular ends simply must have a mental element to them; a lethargy at first, knowing they always start badly and recover, followed by a rush of confidence at the end. A good sports psychologist could write a thesis three inches thick about a season with this lot but if Martinez is to become a top manager for one of the so called bigger Premier League clubs then he has to get to the root of the problem and solve it. As do Wigan, whether he stays or not, because as Southampton and Coventry both proved you can only do this late Houdini escape act so many times before something goes slightly wrong and it catches up with you. Interview
We’re joined for the second time this season by the editor of the Cockney Latics website, and Wigan fan Liam, who were kind enough to spare us some time and give us the latest from the DW Stadium. Assess Wigan's season for us - and are you confident it will end with Premier League safety? CL: Latics’ season has been a weird one in the sense that we haven’t really set it on fire and especially at the beginning of the season we just could get any consistency at all. That said we managed to get some points on the board and have never been set adrift at the bottom. We all wanted a continuance of the finish to last season but injuries ended that chance and it has only been the last few weeks that we have actually had a near full strength squad to choose form. I think we will be fine as I can see us getting a minimum of nine to 11 more points which will set us up in fifteenth or sixteenth area above Sunderland. Villa and Newcastle. Liam: Compared to last season we are in a relatively healthy place. I am very confident we will survive this year due to our easier run in compared to previous years and the fact we are sitting outside the bottom three, albeit on goal difference. Our season has been boosted massively by a great FA Cup run which should at least end with us in Europe for the first time, just hopefully not with us playing 46 Championship games. Why do you think Wigan always seem to struggle initially before putting on a late run of results at the end? Liam: I am beginning to think we do it on purpose. This season I worried when pundits like Mark Lawrenson almost banked on us to come good late on, but here we are again and we seem to be doing it. Unlike like season however we suffered from some horrendous injuries, which meant we didn't have a consistent team; particularly at the back. Our upturn in form has coincided with players like Antolin Alcaraz returning and the emergence of Callum McManaman. That can't be coincidence in my opinion. CL: We don’t always have this late surge, it has happened last season, the other times we were in a much better position going into the New Year than we were last year... it is a media blown stigma that has been created. Yes we have stayed up on the last day of the season twice before, but not because we had a late surge as such. I think I explained in the previous answer that it is mainly due to injuries, it was the same last season as well. What did you make of the whole Callum McManaman incident, and the response from Dave Whelen and Roberto Martinez to it? CL: Yet again the McManaman incident was a media led frenzy, there were two tackles in that same game that were as bad but no mention, what about that tackle on Henderson at Villa... no mention. I felt sorry for Callum, but the chairman should have phrased his answer a bit better when asked about it. We can all see what he meant, but it didn’t come across that way. Liam: I do wish Dave Whelan would keep his opinions to himself, however I am not surprised Martinez backed his player. My personal opinion is the lad was on his Premiership debut and I bet you Premiership safety any player on their debut would go in for every tackle. He won the ball and in the seconds that followed he couldn't get out of the way of the Newcastle player. It was unfortunate but I feel the witch hunt that followed was ridiculous. McManaman now needs to knuckle down and shrug of the tag of being a dirty player. Will Martinez still be the manager next season? Is support for him unanimous among the Wigan fans? Liam: Despite keeping us up year on year, there are still Latics fans who are not behind Martinez. I can see their point that since he took over our league position has not improved, but our style of football has and if Whelan stopped trying to pawn our good players to better teams I think we could be a good mid-table side. Unless we get investment like you have, we are probably destined for lower mid table/relegation scraps. If we get into Europe I see him staying 100%, I think we will get one more year out of him irrelevant but partially due to there not being any big jobs available in the summer. CL: Wigan fans want Martinez to realise his dream before he goes, if we should stay up this season and beat Millwall to get to the FA Cup Final and maybe have a kick around in Europe next season, I think it will give him, the chairman and the players new drive to kick on from. Who are the likely winners of your Player of the Year award this season? Who are the weak links that need replacing this summer? CL: With such a small squad now, we really don’t have the ‘weak link’. We may have some older players that might think that the Premier League is a step too far next season, but none that I would say ‘they are useless, let’s get rid’. The player of the season will be one of Maloney, Kone, Figueroa and McCarthey. If Alcaraz and Scharner been available all season they would have got in that short list as well. Liam: It will be between Shaun Maloney or Arouna Kone. We have had a lot of very steady performers this season but those two – particularly Kone since returning from the African Nations – have been influential. We have a balanced team but I feel we really need a speedy defender, our lack of speed at the back has been our undoing. We could also do with a wing back for the right side in Beausejour’s mould. Al Habsi has been quite poor, making a lot of mistakes and he has been dropped for Joel (On loan from Spain) but I expect him to stay. Scout ReportWigan have shunned the popular 4-2-3-1 set up employed by many Premier League clubs of late – particularly those with foreign coaches – and set up in a wing-back system that used to work a treat on Championship Manager circa 1998. Jean Beausejour has made one of those wing back positions his own but Ronnie Stam, so impressive in the first half of the season, seems to have lost his place of late to Emmerson Boyce. QPR showed with their second goal at the DW Stadium in December the potential problems with this set up – when Shaun Wright-Phillips interrupted Wigan playing the ball out to their wide man he then had acres of space where a conventional full back would ordinarily be standing to work in and pick out a cross for Djibril Cisse to score. The system places a lot of emphasis on the three centre backs and it’s a real shame for Rangers that a 4-0 hammering by Liverpool seems to have ended Gary Caldwell’s selection in that trio – the Scot is a Premier League player in name only and would struggle to hang onto Loic Remy’s coat tails. Nevertheless QPR have Junior Hoilett and Andros Townsend in sufficient form to take advantage of the Martinez defensive set up and the R’s should focus on getting both on the ball in the space behind the wing backs when they push down the field. This is not a particularly quick or mobile back three which could play into Loic Remy’s hands.
But the formation clearly has its advantages, and a lot of them strike right at the heart of where QPR are weak. By playing three centre backs and two wing backs rather than a conventional back four Wigan are able to commit an extra body to the attack and have more often than not used Shaun Maloney in a free-role behind a front two of Kone and Di Santo. Maloney has had his best season in the Premier League as a result and whenever the R’s have faced a team that uses creative players in those spaces between the conventional lines of the QPR set up they have struggled – Michu is the obvious example but there have been others. At the DW in December Rangers coped reasonably with Kone, Di Santo and Gomez who played the Maloney role that day, but in doing so couldn’t help but leave space for the deeper lying midfielders McCarthy and McCarthur to make late runs into and that cost them two points. The whole system makes Wigan a dangerous team to host. QPR need to win this game, and generally teams look at Wigan as a banker home three points. But you won’t find a team this low down the table committing this many quality players to an attack that often, and both Everton and Reading have shipped three goals on their own patch to Martinez’s men in recent matches. QPR need to win and have to go for it, but given how poor they’ve been defensively when they’ve opened up and attacked Fulham and Aston Villa in the last two games there has to be a concern about the damage this very dangerous Wigan attack could potentially do to them on Sunday. Links >>> Official Website >>> Travel Guide >>> Cockney Latic >>> Wiganer.net >>> Vital Wigan Forum >>> This Northern Soul Tweet @loftforwords Pictures – Action Images Photo: Action Images Please report offensive, libellous or inappropriate posts by using the links provided.
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