Wigan Preview

By: Martin | April 10th, 2009

Wigan Athletic

Current Position: 8th, 11-8-12 (41 points, -2 goal differential)

Home Form: 7-4-4

Recent Form: LLWWL

Last Meeting: Arsenal 1-Wigan 0 (12/6/08)

Aston Villa Watch: Everton

Everton Watch: at Aston Villa

Tomorrow we travel to the JJB to play Wigan Athletic. A relegation candidate coming into the season, Wigan has defied expectations and has an outside chance at qualifying for Europe. Steve Bruce has shown himself to be one of the best of the English managers, and has laid out a blueprint for success at a small club: use scouting to uncover and sign cheap talent from smaller countries, sell that talent once it gets established to the bigger clubs for a profit, and be willing to take on malcontents from other clubs at a discount. It’s basically finding talent that other teams have passed on or don’t want, sort of like “The Bad News Bears: English Premier League.”

When it all comes together, this strategy can work—both young, unscouted players and players who have fallen out with their old clubs have something to prove and play with a chip on their shoulder, desperate to show everyone how wrong they were. This was apparent at the beginning of the year, when players like Honduran internationals Wilson Palacios and Maynor Figueroa, Ecuadorian midfielder Antonio Valencia, on loan Egyptian striker Amr Zaki, oft-criticized English veterans Emile Heskey and Titus Bramble, and cast-offs Lee Cattermole (Middlesbrough) and Mario Melchiot (Chelsea, Birmingham City), all banded together and played well, with wins over Everton, Newcastle, Manchester City ,and Bolton, and draws with Liverpool and Aston Villa.

However, as Jerry Seinfeld once said of Robert Frost’s poem, “sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason.” Sometimes undiscovered or rejected talent is undiscovered or rejected for a reason. The last couple of months have been a struggle for Wigan—since Palacios’ sale to Spurs and Heskey’s sale to Villa, the club has been pretty awful. Wigan replaced them with malcontents Charles N’Zogbia from Newcastle, and Hassam Mido on loan from Boro, but neither has had the desired impact. Furthermore, Zaki, who showed such scoring prowess at the beginning of the year, lost his touch, became unsettled, and refused to return to the team after the international break, forcing Bruce to come out in the press and slam Zaki for his lack of professionalism.

There’s no mystery to Wigan. They play solid defense, and battled hard in our 1-0 win in December. But they have to, because their attack kind of sucks—only three teams in the top level have scored fewer goals than Wigan’s 30. They’ve especially struggled lately, only scoring 7 goals in their last 13 games. They’ve also done the single most important thing for any relegation candidate—beat the other bottom of the table teams. Wigan has accumulated 24 of their 41 points in just 11 games against the bottom seven teams in the table. By contrast, they’ve only managed a single draw in six games against the Big Four.

You can’t ever take any match for granted at this level, especially away contests. But given that Wigan is in disarray and out of form at the moment, as well as their poor record against the elite teams, I think anything less than 3 points tomorrow will be a big disappointment.

And we need all 3 points, because we have to keep pace with Chelsea and put some distance between ourselves and Villa and Everton, who play each other on Sunday. You may be asking—“Why is this so important, given that we’ve got a nearly insurmountable 6 point lead with just 7 games left to play?” Why, I’m glad you asked, imaginary hypothetical reader. Take a gander at our upcoming league fixture list after tomorrow:

4/21—at Liverpool
4/26—Middlesbrough
5/2—at Portsmouth
5/9—Chelsea
5/16—at Manchester United
5/24—Stoke

3 out of our last 6 matches are against our fellow “Big Four” clubs. While the other three are against teams near the bottom of the table, I’m always wary playing teams that are fighting to stay up at that point of the season, because their backs are against the wall and they always give maximum effort. So while we’ve taken 7 points through our first 3 games against Liverpool, United, and Chelsea, realistically, we’ll probably drop points somewhere along the way the second time around. And I’d be much more comfortable going into that stretch of fixtures with a lead of 6 or more points than having to protect a 3 point lead.

On to squad news. As I mentioned yesterday, our backline is going to be makeshift due to injuries. Frankly, though, it’s fortunate (in a glass half-full kind of way) that Gibbs, Djourou, and Fabianski have a game to get their legs under them and play together against a team like Wigan that doesn’t present as much of an attacking threat, because playing against Villareal, Chelsea, and Liverpool is going to be a baptism by fire for them all. No word yet on the availability of Diaby, van Persie, and Eduardo, but I don’t see any reason to risk re-injury with such important matches right around the corner. My best guess as to the squad:

Fabianski

Sagna-Djourou-Toure-Gibbs

Walcott-Denilson-Fabregas-Nasri

Arshavin-Bendtner

Obviously Adebayor is playing great at the moment, I just think Wenger will give him some much-deserved rest ahead of the crucial matches ahead of us. Song could get the nod ahead of Denilson, and Adebayor or Vela could start at striker, moving Arshavin to right wing and Walcott to the bench. It wouldn’t be a complete shock if Nasri got a game off and Vela started on the left wing, either. At any rate, this could be a hard-fought game, and Wigan will be playing for the 0-0 draw. But if we’re not looking past this game to the mid-week rematch with Villareal, we should have more than enough firepower to crack open the Latics’ backline.

I won’t be able to see it live because Fox Soccer has the rights and is rebroadcasting it late–I’m going to try to avoid finding out what happened until then, but I’ll be back with some kind of response this weekend, and Travis will be by with his reaction and highlights. At any rate, let’s go out there and steamroll them tomorrow. Come on Arsenal.