Deja Vu for WIgan

A look at the statistics from this season and last makes interesting reading.

2007-2008
Played 9 , won 2 drawn 2, lost 5 points 8
league position 14th.

2008-2009
Played 9 , won 2 drawn 2, lost 5 points 8
league position 15th.

Last season, three games later we parted company with Chris Hutchins replacing him with the present incumbent Steve Bruce.

It is not unreasonable to opine that the next three games could be pivotal in our season.

FThe enxt game is Fulham away on Wednesday who have an idnetical points for and againstgoal ratio ,lose and we drop below them. Portsmouth away next Saturday are reelng from Harry Rednapp's decision to decamp to Spurs. Then its the big one.... Stoke at home, a six pointer if there ever was one.

So whats gone wrong, this season was full of optimism, we had signed probably the best striker outside the top four of any of the big three leagues in Europe,although the first option to buy appears not to exist. We had secured the contracts of Valencia, Kirkland, Scharner and Palacios thereby cementing the backbone of the team and brought in quality players in Kapo, De Ridder et al allowing lesser players such as Skoko and King to move on.

The problems I see are three fold.

First the lack of depth... an outfield squad of 21 players is always going to be vulnerbale to injuries/suspensions as evidenced today with the team robbed of Melchiot and Valencia looking short of ideas and creativity.

Second is the lack of strikers...going into a Premier League season with three strikers, one untried in Zaki( who has more than prioved his worth), one who is never going to be a top goal scorer in Heskey and whom we seem content toallow him to see his contract out and Camara who seems to have lost his pace and appears on the bench simply to ake the numbers up. If he was a valued member of the team then why didnt we bring him on today and go 433 to try and snatch something from the game rather than bring on a defensive midfielder in Brown and why did we allegdly try and sell him to Stoke on deadline day?

Thirdly the quality of some of the player brought in isn't what we expected. De Ridder and Kapo have been major disappointments so far. Neither are worthy of a first team place but have very little competition for being replaced.

So what do we do? well until January we can only hope that we muddle through accruing enough points to keep us from being in the bottom three and then hope we can attract two strikers a winger and another centre back.

I would also recommend securing Heskey to another contract and paying top dollar to secure Zaki's long term future to Wigan.

The alternative is to struggle against relegation again and with Hull's tremendous start to the season means that there will be a big battle near the bottom and we cannot afford to be in it.

Steve Bruce has changed many things at Wiagn and many pundits beleive that we are a good Premier League side. However the table doesn't lie and we are where we are because we deserve to be.

Steve Bruce is a shrwed manager and I am sure that he will turn things around but we need a good return of a minimum of five points from the next three games to breathe a lttle easier.

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