Wigan Athletic: Five things we learned from Swansea City (a)

1 No end in sight to the misery. One win in 17, now 27 points dropped from winning positions...once again the effort from the players wasn't in doubt, but the wretched run has clearly taken its toll, with anything resembling belief or confidence having long-been sapped. Urgent action is required - to kickstart the club out of its slumber - because this is only going in one direction at the moment. Literally sleepwalking towards relegation. And it doesn't have to be that way.

2 It might get worse before it gets better. Latics don't even have a game next weekend to focus on, with scheduled opponents Sheffield Wednesday in FA Cup action. With fourth-bottom Stoke playing their game in hand tonight, Latics could well find themselves EIGHT points adrift of safety by the time they next take to the field - which would only add to the pressure for the rescheduled visit of the Owls tomorrow week. And that could lead to...

3 The natives getting restless... To be fair, that's been the case for a few weeks now, and who can blame them? Once again, a few hundred hardly souls made the trip to Swansea, more in morbid fascination rather than hope, let alone expectation. The atmosphere at the DW has turned nasty a couple of times in recent months - Reading and Brentford springing to mind - and that's only going to make turning things around an even tougher task.

4 No sign of help on the horizon. We're now two-thirds of the way through the transfer window, and still only Kieran Dowell has been brought in to bolster the squad. To state the obvious, Latics are badly in need of reinforcements at both ends of the field. But is there any more money to spend, given the £9million outlay last summer? Yes, Latics have men to come back in...Dujon Sterling, Josh Windass, Michael Jacobs, Anthony Pilkington and Joe Gelhardt to name five. But Charlie Mulgrew's return to Blackburn, and Danny Fox being unable to steer clear of injuries, means a centre-back is desperately needed. And one look at the unused bench from Saturday - Jamie Jones, Tom Pearce, Chey Dunkley and Lewis Macleod - suggests there's not exactly a surplus of attacking talent to call on either.

5 Time to look to the future? While Latics are struggling at first-team level, the rest of the club continues to sweep all before them at their respective age groups. Last week, the Under-18s eliminated Spurs from the FA Youth Cup and, over the weekend, the Under-23s hammered their Liverpool counterparts 3-0 - without even being at full strength. There's long been a clamour for Joe Gelhardt to get more game-time in the first team, but how about Jensen Weir? And maybe others? What's the worst that can happen?