Thetownend.com

Things are kicking off on the Wigan forums so thought it'd be a whole lot jollier over here with you Swindoners!

Would just like to say well done you fully deserved the 3 points today. Your team shows a level of fight and spirit that is all too rare in the Premier League. Watching you today reminded me of the days we were down in the lower leagues and got me thinking I wouldn't half mind being back there! Forgotten the feeling of actually looking forward to a game and thinking we'd have a shot at winning!

Also i thought the atmosphere at your ground today was great and it would be nice to see that kind of thing at the DW once in a while. Your team looked like it had a few talented players, i like the look of Ritchie. He can actually put in a cross unlike any of our players who decided it would be better to try some silly little flicks and work the ball into the box like we're Barcelona. It might work if we had Messi but we don't, we have Gary Caldwell.

With Di Canio you have a bright young manager and the future looks good for you guys. Will probably meet you in League 1 in a couple of years and i'll look forward to it.

Congratulations again, enjoy Wembley when you get there. :)

indeed

What did you think of caddis?

My main worry is the vultures circling

Thanks for the comments, very gracious. Can you tell me who your no 10 was? Thought he looked ok but didnt manage to get a programme to see who it was.

Shaun Maloney

Ex celtic and villa i believe

Fair play Mark - decent response.

Was Caddis your number 7? He's a player i wouldn't mind having! But then again i would have traded all your players for ours today!!! :doh:

And yes its Shaun Maloney. Has only played 1 game this year so havent seen too much of him. Still unsure but he is meant to be a decent player.

Nice touch and always appreciate decent fans with "normal" comments.

Yes a great night for the Town. You knocked the ball around very well but you have to expect that from premiership players.
Di Canio has got Swindon very fit as you would have witnessed today. They put in a massive pre-season fitness campaign and train hard almost daily. Second half we kept going.
We are strong down the right with Ritchie and Caddis.

Have no problem with Wigan and enjoyed trips to your old stadium and have visited the new one where we lost 1-0. Agree with you about the Premiership. Sadly money has killed the top League in England.
Good luck in staying up but if you do go down to the Championship it's not the end of the World.

Yeah caddy is no 7

To be fair I thought the Ginger lad (no 8) Ben Watson was the best player on the pitch.
For Wigan everything came from him.

Fair play Mark, good luck in your relegation battle, we might be playing eachother in the league in a few years time! Here's hoping anyway

I'm sure the board realise that, bearing in mind how we are doing so far, they are not going to let anyone go anywhere unless PDC says so

Agrreed baners. That no 6 was a dirty cunt though

McManaman was their best player for me. Also liked the look of their left back, though no idea what he's called.

Haha Hendry Thomas always is. He's a nasty little bugger. Not played all season, this was his big chance to impress but he failed. Not exactly a Martinez player, wont surprise you to hear he was brought in by Steve Bruce!

The left back was Mustoe who's a young lad who's come through the academy. But yes McManaman looks like he'll be a class player. Still young and has been with the club for ages, its nice to see some good youngsters coming through.

Probably a stupid question but is he related to Steve?

Yeah, your left back has a great foot on him. He was playing Hollywood passes across the field time and again. He was the stand out for me.

Wikipedia says he's a 'distant relative' haha.

Apparantly he is a distant cousin but theyve never met.

wow we get 3 point as well  :pint: :ty:

I thought your right back Boyce was terrible. Was hardly ever given the ball. Whenever he got the ball, he'd do nothing and pass it straight back. He gave an odd good cross, but apart from that, he was out of the game.

A bit like my missus and Daniel O'donnell ( thank fuck)

Just realised that was a rather stupid comment haha  :girlgiggle: apologies

He's usually a lot better than that but his kid has been ill in hospital for a few months so he's not been training and this was his first game back.

Feel bad now dont ya!?  ;) haha

Ooops :cry:
I hope his kid gets better soon...

He's out of hospital now so don't worry  :)

It's nice to get a message from a decent fan of other teams.

Wigan looked very good on the ball, but seemed to lack the final ball or a cutting edge.

Whether or not the players Martinez left out would make a difference I wouldnt know.

We have had a good run of results, and you can never underestimate what confidence can do but I thought we were good value for our win today.

Good luck for the rest of the season, I know many people would like teams like Wigan out of the top flight, but as a fan of a smaller club I like the fact that the big teams can be turned over from time to time

Yeah i like to think we're an ambassador for teams such as yourselves that show with the right attitude, belief and luck (and the odd bit of money) you can make it to the top.

As for the players we left out, yes they are far more talented than the ones on show today E.g. Moses, Rodallega, Al Habsi, McCarthy. But the general style of play would be no different. Keep the ball easily at the back but have no penetration going forward so i doubt the outcome would have been much different. Have to say, i think Di Canio got the tactics spot on today.

Didn't al habsi and Moses play today?

If I'm honest, I expected Martinez to field much a weaker team than what he named.

No matter how good or bad Wigan play, with Franco di Santo up front, they'll never do anything. I assume he doesn't really play ever? Just think, he was at Chelsea not so long ago. He is absolutely fucking terrible. And i'm pretty sure all his career goals have been deflected speculative punts. Hilarious.

Watson ran the show for them.Mcmanaman looked a handful - other than that they were ordinary. You can only beat whats put in front of you.

Watson had a lot of the ball, but did fuck all with it. Most of their play revolved around triangles between him, caldwell and boyce (why on earth did wigan only have one man on the right, especially when that man is emerson boyce).

I think what impressed me most today was our discipline - similar to the morecambe game, we were more than comfortable allowing the opposition the ball.

I like the way we can do that. " go on have the ball, you can't hurt us" becoming one of our standard tactics, and then Caddis, Ritchie, ferry rip them to fuck on the counter.

Watson looked very as did McNamamamaman.

Al Habsi pulled off a cracking save from Ritchie in the 1st half.
But was he carrying an injury though? He didn't want to kick the ball upfield and got booked for "time wasting" just because he had no options to roll the ball out to.

Good luck for the rest of the season, hope you guys stay up.

Thanks Mark, we know how it feels to lose to a lower league team (try Histon or Crawley). Nice you found the time and desire to post. Its not often we are headline news, so we are bloody well enjoying it!

Never seen a team play "batman's wings" so often from goal kicks. I realise this needs explanation. Last year my son started to play league football (U7). The coach was trying to get whoever played in defence to go out wide and give the 'keeper width' to pass the ball to, and close together whenever the ball was with the opposition. The best analogy he came up with was "batmans wings open" and "Batman's wings closed".

Never seen a team try to play it out from the back so much, especially from goal kicks. It may raise an eyebrow or two, but maybe it explains why the Spanish are so technically superior to us English.

I have to admit, I have never seen a team play it out short so often. To be fair it did work but you had no penetration in the final third.

Didn't Southampton do similar earlier this season?

Here, here, so let no-one take that away from us.

However, if I was the Latics chairman I'd be fucking livid at going out of the cup in the third round to a fourth division team home or away, it shouldn't happen. They'll be gutted if we get a plum tie in the next round. On top of winning £67,600 for winning the third round tie we could get a big payday and £90,000 if we win the fourth round. Crawley, Notts County or Stevenage at home please. We can take on the big fish in round five, go out gracefully bag £90k for our prize money and another £500k for a share of the Gate & TV money. Just wishful thinking.

Go back to the days of Ardilles and Hoddle, we did this most of the time. Once you have possession you in theory should be able to keep it. Punt it up field and you can easily lose possession. Their back line struggled with our forwards pushing forwards and closing them down, just not used to it. Probably did not expect us to play the ball around like we did either.

Probably also expected us to manage this for half a game then fade, unfortunately for them out fitness proved we could do it for 90 minutes and in fact finish stronger in the last 10...

The way their back four played it was if they had never seen a cross before.

I was at the game, but I don't remember this. Mind you the Clarke incident overtook on field events that game.

No our number 7 was Alberto Comazzi, make us a bid of a million and hes yours :D

 :nod:

 :clap:

Wigan play some lovely football Mark, without the cutting edge. If I was Dave Whelan I'd be putting in an offer for fox in the box Simon Cox. He could save your season.

This is very true, Wigan did play some good attractive football but did look a bit suspect at the back at times and desperately need a good striker, sounds a lot like when we played in the Premier League, we played some great football at time but that means nothing unless you can stop the goals at the back and can score goals, Di Santo certainly isn't good enough.

Best of luck for the rest of the season but it is going to be tough for you guys without investment.

That is not a bad shout and would not break the bank.

I don't think he was injured at all. I think it was a Wigan tactic to play out from the back and keep possession and make our players run around. Once the front two were instructed to push right up to their penalty box, and Al Habsi got booked, he was forced to just kick it out meaning we won more ball.

Not sure West Brom would be keen, why would they want to make a potential rival stronger.

I saw a comment in the paper today about Cox going to Middlesboro, which wouldn't surprise me what with Mowbray being the manager.

Nice to see credit from Wigan fans. Those on the radio phone ins last night were all complimentary about us and said we deserved to win.

Yes it is, and above all they were right

Thought they would moan about our second goal being offside(which they could have with justification)but they didn't.
I hope they stay up(don't think they will though)