Wigan Athletic 12th Man - 04/01/12

This weeks 12th Man feature in the Wigan Evening Post featured just the one contribution from Vital Latics:

New Year, New Hope

With the New Year comes new hope, we are still at the bottom end of table but the form of late has been promising to say the least. The pre-Christmas games against West Brom, Liverpool and Chelsea not only saw us pick up valuable points but also put in good performances, the draw at Stoke also showed the battling qualities and the heart that the team now has, coming back from having a man sent off and going behind in the 84th minute was fantastic, special mention must go to Ben Watson for coming on straight from the subs bench to take a penalty with just four minutes on the clock, I heard he said he was 'slightly nervous`, nerves of steel more like.

We are halfway through the season now, a good time to take stock, following the disastrous run of defeats, when at times I thought relegation would be a blessing, so woeful were some of the performances, the team have definitely turned the corner, credit for this is 100% with Martinez, he tinkered with the formation and tactics, he changed personnel around and he got the fight back, the desire back, but most importantly the belief back. If we can continue to play with the same passion for the rest of the season then you can forget any talk of going down.

January is here and that means the transfer window opens for a month, there are three prominent members of the squad, Momo Diame, Hugo Rodallega and Jordi Gomez out of contract at the end of the season, it will be interesting to see if any are sold as this will be the last chance to cash in if we can`t get them to re-sign. Personally I`d offer Diame the moon to stay and build the team around him I rate him that highly.

FA cup 3rd round weekend coming up and a trip to Paolo Di Canio`s League 2 Swindon for some romance, I`d love us to take it seriously, though I know in my heart that we won`t, Premier League survival and all that, but the magic of the cup still survives in my corner of Wigan and I`m one Latics fan that wants a cup run.

So to 2012, hopefully a year that will see the Latics maintain their Premier League status and enjoy a good run in the FA cup, please.

Pity about Tuesday night though!

Barry Worthington

















Latics and Proud



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