Wigan Athletic: The 12th Man

Martin Tarbuck:

As if there wasn’t enough reasons to hate Millwall, they also managed to let me down on my coupon last weekend by winning away at Preston. I have also filed this under my extensive “reasons to hate Preston” list for good measure, why couldn’t they be useless the week before? The thing is, without ever proclaiming to know the answers, I have always been a reasonably passionate defender of Paul Cook. When we’ve won one, it has eased my burden and even when we’ve drawn or lost, if we haven’t deserved it or it has been by the odd goal. Yet, there have been one or two occasions, where even a meek happy clapper like myself has thought he’s got to go, such as the home capitulations against Brentford, Reading and Bristol City. We’ve all got our own thoughts and emotions and they all move about a bit depending on the result of the last game. I can be as stubborn as the next man, but my stance has probably changed multiple times this season depending on whether a game gave me a glimmer of hope or sent me to the pits of despair. Only football can provide such emotions, and it is probably why there’s been so much angst and anger poured out this season. So anyway, where are we? Currently three points adrift but more realistically four points given our goal difference, and with a critical home game versus Millwall and an away at Reading to follow.

In context as to my above thoughts on Cook, I think I have already stated I am surprised he is still in a job, but then there’s no guarantee the next manager will do a better job. The trouble with that statement is, yes, there are no guarantees, but when you look at our next two opponents, they ditched their manager at the first sign of panic, and they are in fact flying up the table. Reading managed to destroy us at our place with an £8million centre-forward but, aside from that, they looked no better and certainly aren’t much bigger than us. As for Millwall, well they MUST be bigger than us as they once took 50,000 to Wembley against us in the Auto Windscreen Shields! No but Millwall, I very much doubt are much bigger than us, given their squad and their crowds, yet under Gary Rowett they seem to be charging towards the play-offs. Maybe we should have booted Cook into touch at the start of the season, and moved for serial Championship manager Rowett? I don’t think his football is very pleasant but needs must, and I’m not so precious that I’m not prepared to watch us rough it to grind out a few wins. The ironic of Cook’s “style” is we seem to play better when we try and pass the ball, and much of the early-season rubbish was down to punting it up to Kieffer Moore, who then flicks it on to absolutely nobody. Bottom line for most fans I guess is that we don’t care how we do it, so long as it works! There’s a lot of ifs and buts and maybes there and, who knows, if we got rid of Cook and appointed Rowett or AN Other, it may not have had the same impact, or maybe it would. More ifs and maybes. There are no guarantees. And there are no guarantees we will go up or stay down yet.

We do need a significant upturn in form though. I’d go as far to say that, even if we do stay up, we need a bloody good look at what has gone wrong in a car crash of a season regardless. They say there are no easy games in football, but Millwall definitely don’t give anyone an easy game, and the fact they beat play-off chasing Preston on their own patch last week suggests a difficult game could be in store on Saturday. We’ve gone past the stage where we need to worry about them, however. With Barnsley and Luton now starting to pick up points again, we could be bottom by next Wednesday come 10pm. Or we could be out of the drop zone completely. I suspect the latter may require six points out of six, even four points would not be good enough. So suddenly it looks a tall order. The world could look a much brighter place, or we could be officially DOOMED! It’s clear as mud as ever. The pattern seems to be that we will trundle along picking up the odd point here and there, but not enough to cause us to rise up the table or sink to the depths. It’s not in our gift to determine that, it is up to Paul Cook and his players. We watch in hope. They’ll be leaving us hanging on till the end as usual is my bet.

Sean Livesey:

So near, yet so far. Latics are improving – no doubt about that. The question is if that improvement can continue, and if Latics have enough to stay up. It’s still too early to say, but the next few weeks should give us a clearer idea of our fate. Last Saturday’s match against play-off chasing Cardiff may have had the same result as last week’s draw with Middlesbrough but very little of the refereeing controversy we saw at the DW. Kieffer Moore finally looks like the striker we paid for last August. He’s always worked his socks off, but until now hasn’t been able to regularly add goals to his game. With five goals now, two of which came in the Welsh capital, I imagine confidence is sky-high for the man who hopes to lead the line for his country at the Euros. Form-wise, we’re doing ok at the minute. Carry this on and we’ve every chance of achieving survival. Indeed, we’re only three points worse off from where we were at this time last season. The key is for us not to lose any more ground. Both Luton and Barnsley made up ground on us at the weekend with important wins, but thankfully it means Middlesbrough, and indeed Stoke, are still in the mix at the bottom of the table. Millwall are next up on Saturday and, similar in both style and form to Cardiff, Bermondsey’s finest aren’t going to be an easy match by any stretch. But it is essential we manage to pick up three points. The pressure on Paul Cook has eased in recent weeks, and the players look like they believe a bit more. That confidence is huge when you look at those draws against Middlesbrough and Cardiff – they were games we would have easily lost a few months, if not weeks, ago. We need to believe we can get those wins now. Do that and maybe just maybe we can start thinking about retaining our Championship status in 2020/21. With seven days coming up that culminates in a trip to the Hawthorns before we face everyone in the bottom six next month, it’s imperative we get as much as we can from the Millwall and Reading matches. C’mon lads, it isn’t over till it’s over.

Paul Middleton:

A week, so they say, is a long time in politics. But it’s the blink of an eye in football. After a week in late January and early February, where it seemed like things were looking up, Latics still can’t close the gap enough to the teams above. Yes, the ref against Middlesborough was awful, but that’s not the game that will relegate us. It’s the other 30 games where Paul Cook hasn’t had a clue what to do. There were better signs against Cardiff but, yet again, it feels like we’re always going to be vulnerable in defence. To be fair, since we offloaded Josh Windass to Sheffield Wednesday, we’ve looked much better going forward. With the right support, Kieffer Moore is clearly our best striker and, finally, we seem to have stopped just hoofing it up to him and hoping for the best. For now, at least. Who knows what hare-brained tactics Cook will come up with against Millwall?

You’ll have gathered, by now, I have little faith in Cook getting us out of the mess he’s helped to create. He seems the type of bloke who will listen to criticism but then carry on exactly as before, regardless of the damage it might do. He keeps having passive aggressive pops at the fans, like it’s our fault for not wanting to be relegated. It often feels like he really is just making things up as he goes along in the hope that we will, one day, be able to afford to sack him. Which we won’t, of course. I hear lots of fans say they’d like to be back in League One, but they are missing one huge point about relegation. We got promoted twice because we had the best squad, not necessarily because we had the best manager at the time. This time around, with the inevitable loss of the better players, we won’t necessarily have the best squad. The owners won’t put money in, we know that, so what happens when we don’t get promoted first time? With the company in charge already registered in a tax haven, how long will it be before bits of the club – and the ground itself – being sold to the highest bidder?

We’ve long laughed at the rugby and their parlous finances, but we’re getting to the point where we could end up much worse off. We’ve seen a lot of clubs in massive trouble, recently, as a result of owners who care more about their pockets than they do about their clubs. We know nothing about Stanley Choi or anybody else, other than they seem to like to run their businesses at a loss every year. That, unless there’s some seriously good accounting going on, simply isn’t sustainable with a club like Latics. If buying us was a gamble, I fear the bet is about to come up short. Once it does, who’s going to step in to help out? There are lots of people who would like to own a football club, but few who can genuinely afford it. If we’re in League One next season, the value of the football club drops considerably. Revenues also drop way beyond what a club like Latics can afford to lose. And who’ll pick up the pieces? My fear is that no one will.

Andy Carey:

Another one down and 13 to go. I said it last week and things haven’t changed significantly. It’s going to be a close one. The away form has significantly improved since the turn of the year, although it couldn’t have got any worse. Stating the obvious, but if we can put a run together at home and not lose to those around us away from home, then we’ve a chance. It may be papering over the cracks, however I still believe we are not one of the three worst sides in this league. Going to Cardiff, I’d argue a point would’ve been a good result against a strong side with promotion hopes. Big Kieffer showed us, with some decent service, that isn’t a long ball punted to him in hope, he has some quality. He also and demonstrated to Mr Windass how to finish a penalty away from home. Thankfully, the ref was kinder at the death, disallowing their ‘goal’ which on another day, or if Oliver Langford was the ref, would’ve stood. Saturday sees Millwall arrive at ‘fortress’ DW with play-off aspirations (how did that happen?). Man for man are they that much better than us? Results say so but this is one we can and need to win. I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s looked, and the fixtures and worked out where we need to be picking up points. A victory and the ‘believe’ bus is fully fuelled. Who knows maybe by the final whistle on Saturday we could have a striker as our top scorer. March will be a huge month in determining what happens. If we can stay in touch, or even climb out of the bottom three by the end of March, it may be time to get excited. All any fan wants is a team that gives their all, and I don’t think that can be argued with this group. There’s some potentially huge away days on the horizon and I can’t wait! I’ve earmarked Barnsley as ‘the one’. Now I’m biased as I’ve lived in Barnsley for the last 16 years or so travelling back for home games (super fan points for me). It’ll be reasonably priced tickets, a good allocation, it’s not that far (unless you’re walking it, good luck to the ‘Walk for Joseph’ lot!) and it’s one we will have to win. I’ve got everything crossed we get to the Easter weekend with it in our hands, and we have a strong finish like last season!

Statto:

Well a point at Cardiff is a good point to start with. The change of ownership has gone through, don’t expect too much change on that front, but it did throw up the vast sums of money needed to keep us going at Championship level. We of course will now be less informed as nothing has to go through the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. We just have to keep faith that the owners and the chairman know what they are doing. Big week of games coming up and also the youth team cup tie at Old Trafford. So as always, ‘ Up the ‘Tics’ and stay positive!