Wigan Athletic: The 12th Man - From Socrates quotes to free pies...another regulation week at Latics

Alan Rogers:

Before we get to Tuesday evening, we must just touch on the worst news of the week...possibly the worst news for many weeks! The inspirational Ian Evatt has parted company with the team from Horwich. Well, when I say inspirational, he always seemed to inspire the opposition! Unfortunately, we knew it couldn't last forever.

Anyway, back to Tuesday night, there's simply no avoiding it. After two gritty, battling, away performances, we were now faced with a potential banana skin against the team propping up the division. But things were now beginning to click on the pitch, and we had new signings waiting to play their part, so surely we would simply brush aside Burton? It's never that simple though is it, as far as the Latics are concerned? On a miserable night, everything felt flat before the kick-off. Small crowd, no atmosphere, and an uneasy sense of impending embarrassment. And then the team was announced and the nerves began to jangle even more. New signings Ollie Norburn and Jon Mellish were in the starting line-up, and I for one was more than a little surprised.

Anyone who reads my ramblings most weeks will know I'm a Shaun Maloney supporter. But I'm not blindly following him over the edge of a cliff! When he gets it wrong, it needs to be respectfully pointed out, and in my humble opinion he got it very wrong on Tuesday evening. I think Norburn and Mellish will hopefully prove to be successful signings, but my understanding is that they are a similar kind of player. I think playing them both from the start left us with a woeful lack of creativity, and showed far too much respect to our opponents.

Burton were enthusiastic and worked hard, but they were allowed to grow into the game by a lacklustre Wigan. Apart from Thelo, we offered very little attacking desire, and even he suffered from a lack of support from those around him. In fact, if it hadn't been for Thelo, the night could have been even more embarrassing. But on a disappointing evening, his goal only served to advertise his skills once more to the wider footballing world! So on the one hand, Tuesday was a night to quickly forget but, on the other hand, the players, Shaun and his staff should be made to watch this game on a loop for the next couple of days. Wrong team selection, wrong tactics, and wrong substitutions. Nobody's perfect, but Shaun needs to lift himself and his team and prove his critics - myself included this week - wrong on Saturday.

And finally, someone at Wigan Athletic seems to have come up with a cunning plan to calm down disgruntled fans. Working on the theory that the average Tic has the memory span of a goldfish, they continue to distribute free pies at the end of each game. The pies are left over from the kiosks, and are quite rightly given away rather than be binned. On Tuesday night I spotted two large boxes - more than usual because of the low crowd. Angry fans were leaving for home, spotting the pies, and seconds later...smiles all round, and all was seemingly forgiven! Crisis? What crisis? I've got a free chicken balti pie, and all is well with the world as I swim around my bowl…

Matt Auffrey:

Just when we thought we had this team figured out, they threw us for another loop. We entered Tuesday evening having defeated two relatively in-form mid-table sides away from home in Mansfield and Stevenage. Shaun Maloney made six changes to the starting line-up against Burton, and the decision looked to be a wise one early on as Dale Taylor played Thelo Aasgaard through on goal to break the deadlock in the 32nd minute. That moment would unfortunately flip the match on its head, as Burton responded with a near-immediate equaliser after some horrendous defending by Latics. Burton would then grab a second goal around the hour mark, after we failed to stop another counter-attack. Taylor’s short-range effort off the far post marked our only legitimate chance at salvaging a point for the rest of the match.

An uninspiring performance produced a disappointing result against a bottom-of-the-table side that was winless over their last nine matches across all competitions. And our awful home record took another hit as we have failed to win at the Brick for four consecutive fixtures now. Our only non-losing result during that stretch was the draw against Shrewsbury, where we blew a two-goal second-half lead. Performances like the one we witnessed against Burton can easily paint a grim picture for the rest of the season. We saw a winning team get changed, and fail to generate a consistent attack against a less-than-impressive defensive unit at home.

Thelo Aasgaard, who has scored four of our last five goals, is rumoured to be out-the-door within the next week, and there is no replacement of his calibre waiting in the wings. We may secure the odd unexpected win against a team challenging for the play-offs over the coming months, but we will likely languish in the league's lower mid-table places until season’s end. We have two more home matches to develop some type of form and confidence before Premier League Fulham visit in in the FA Cup two weeks. This weekend presents an opportunity to right the ship as Bristol Rovers visit the Brick. The Gas are one month into Iñigo Calderón’s tenure as gaffer, and have won their last two league fixtures, which has seen them rise to 18th in the league table - one spot below Latics. While a myriad of injuries in the squad will limit Maloney’s line-up choices in several specific areas, he will have tougher decisions to make about who starts at positions such as left-back and right-wing.

Nonetheless, there should be less concern about who plays on Saturday, and more focus on how we play after Tuesday’s frustrating display. We’ve bounced back from bigger and longer setbacks than a single home defeat. As settled as we would like the team to be at this point in the season, the reality of the situation means we may need to take a step or two backwards to integrate a handful of new players into the first team set-up. With the transfer window closing in one week, the make-up of this squad could change even more dramatically in a week’s time. I do believe in Maloney’s ability to get us back on the right track on the pitch. Let's remain optimistic we will indeed take advantage of this next opportunity to turn our fortune around. C'mon lads!

Lowey:

Well that was a fun cold wet Tuesday night in Wigan, wasn't it? After suffering the latest Standish traffic debacle, I finally got to the ground to see our players endure their own gridlock, with even less chance of getting through. I thought the traffic chaos was frustrating, but the latest Latics offering was obviously going to top that. After the highs of Stevenage, did anyone really not see that coming? Let’s face it, the home form is dire. Whatever we do well away from home, we are doing as badly at home. The problem is we keep doing exactly the same, which inevitably ends with the all-so-familiar defeat.

For all the debate about team selection, I honestly believe it’s of minor relevance. This season we’ve seen many different personnel in the line-up, but the problem is how we set up and play against certain opposition. We never mix it up, the changes are like for like, we know the substitutions before Shaun Maloney does. We brought on a big centre forward on Tuesday night, Dale Taylor dropped into Thelo Aasgaard’s role, and Aasgaard dropped into midfield. We didn’t play one single long ball to him, just continued to play exactly the same way. Then brought on another midfielder (Harry McHugh) for a right-back, so obviously he went and played right-back. The slow passive possession-based football at its very worst summed up when Silko Thomas - in the last minute, when the opportunity to take his full-back on, or get a cross in - passed it 50 yards backwards. Jonny Smith ran at the full-back in the first minute, won a foul which led to a booking, but then stopped taking him on. The left-hand side was non-existent. Why do our wingers spend more time moving away from the opposition full-backs than running at them? It's 'Bring a Friend For Free' on Saturday, which is going to be a hard sell...to convince anyone to come with me…

Billy H:

The frustrations of being a football fan are well-documented, but not so being a 'little ole Wigan' fan. We've had some huge ups, some depressing lows, and a few near-the-knuckle possibilities of the club going to the wall. We've navigated them all, from the highs of an FA Cup final win followed by relegation, and the lows of relegation followed by promotion. Then the prospect of a club on the brink of extinction x2...via a Hong Kong businessman, and then a full-of-promises pen-ticking Middle Eastern moneyman. Both of these were then superseded by what looked like all our dreams coming true....a local billionaire. Only 'little ole Wigan' could uncover a gem of an investor on their doorstep, but unfortunately this came with a caveat of 'sustainability'. This sounds ideal in the current climate, but sadly not when watching some of our performances at the DW/ Brick Stadium. We seem to be able to get up for the so-called big games like Bolton, Rotherham, and Wrexham, but unable to perform against so-called 'lesser' teams. Midweek against Burton was a prime example...a team low in confidence and rock bottom in the league table, yet we rock up and gift them three points. Typical Wigan Latics, and showing yet again how inconsistent we are.

I've tried hard not to be too critical of Shaun Maloney but, when you see performance like the Burton game, it's a difficult watch - especially given the changes and the hard to understand substitutions. We are a frustrating team to watch as you just don't know what team will turn up on the day, what the line-up will be despite how well players might have performed in the previous game, and which substitutes might be brought on. In essence, we are typically consistently inconsistent, which is very frustrating and is reflected in our dwindling crowds, We need consistency both on and off the field, together with a touch more entertainment and excitement on the pitch, which might go some way to getting the crowds back above 9K. Because Tuesday's 7,500 was abysmal. Although sustainability keeps being mentioned, this needs to be tempered with ambition, determination and fight which seemed to be lacking against Burton. 'Speculate to accumulate' may be the mantra to replace the current 'sustainability' one, while getting the team to replace inconsistency on the pitch with consistency on the pitch including team selection barring injuries.

Paul Hughes:

Socrates - the philosopher, not the Brazilian footballing ace - stated the unexamined life is not worth living. Having made another five-hour round trip from my home in Herefordshire for Tuesday's game against Burton, I was definitely examining some of my life choices. In an increasingly atomised society, with daily assaults on everything we hold dear, going to the game has always been a redoubt against life's troubles for the working man and woman. Is it not incumbent on Shaun Maloney, therefore, to provide something recognisable as a coherent tactical plan, which involves the creation of goalscoring opportunities and thus entertainment?

The spectacle of our centre-halves stroking the ball back and forth to each other, while trailing to the league's bottom club, can only guarantee a continuing decrease in crowds, which is disastrous given the owner's view that the club must be self-financing. Ten goals in ten home games tells its own story, and yet this side has proved itself more than capable of delivering performances on the road. The constant rotation of players is another Maloney habit which, if done with care, can be beneficial. But the six changes against Burton left us looking like strangers. Get your thinking cap on, Shaun...this isn't good enough.

Tony Moon:

Well…beggar! From rosy to that horrible cow-pat shade of greeny brown in just a matter of days. If only we moved the ball about on the pitch with such speed! It generally wasn’t a pretty sight against Burton, was it? We started off okay, but somehow - despite a superb goal and some fleeting glimpses of how we can sometimes play - just about every single player out on that pitch for us didn’t really do themselves justice. That’s a sad - and difficult - thing to say. Too few were willing to take responsibility and ownership when things weren’t going great. Simply put, too few did a good job. The same can maybe be said of the manager, but I reckon most people - while probably feeling a little sorry for James Carragher and Luke Robinson missing out, after decent performances on Saturday - looked at that starting XI before the game and thought 'yep, that should do it'.

However, it didn’t. That doesn’t make it the end of the world, and certainly not after two very decent away wins. But it does show that complacency can’t be anywhere near our starting XI in future games. The team has shown how well it can play - it just needs to learn how to play like that more often. Mindset? Commitment? Attitude? Okay, they’re all variations on the same theme, but summat needs sorting. Because we don’t want to lose our 'Messiah' like them men down the road. Roll on Bristol(s). Oooerrrr!