Wigan Athletic’s unbeaten away league record has been lost after Latics fell to a hugely disappointing 2-1 defeat at managerless Hull City. Here are 5 things we learnt from the game.
1) A typical Championship result.
If any game summed up the famous Championship cliché ‘Anyone can beat anyone’ it’s this one. The team with the best away record in the country travelling to a side with 5 straight defeats, no goals in a month and no manager looks like a pretty straight forward win for Latics, but of course its never that easy. Whether complacency was a problem I don’t know but Latics weren’t on it at all and were duly punished by Hull City.
2) Direct not correct?
This is a topic that will divide opinion no matter the team selection, the performance and the result. At times Latics play with a mix of direct passing and patient build up which more often than not earns us positive results, see the Rotherham game for example. Unfortunately though there are occasions where we go route one and whilst it has brought us success at times it just feels like a waste of time, particularly in games like yesterday. By playing like that from the start it removes our ‘plan B’ option and makes for pretty grim viewing.
3) Percentages football has games like this…
Carrying on from the previous point its worth mentioning that results like this aren’t the end of the world despite the negativity that comes with them. Leam, just like former mentor Paul Cook, is big on the fine margins of football and won’t look to make drastic and expansive changes unless absolutely necessary. Whilst for supporters it can feel quite uninspiring at times especially against perceived weaker sides it’s a method that gives us the best chance of success across the season as a whole. We’ve got to accept that the good comes with a fair share of the bad and we won’t see methods change anytime soon.
4) Will Keane finds form.
One, in fact the only, positive to take from yesterday’s game was Latics’ goal. Some lovely play by Nyambe and Aasgaard left Thelo in space and he delivered a wonderful delivery into the six yard box where Will Keane nodded home. It was a typical Keane goal and something we saw plenty last season, finding space in the area and finishing with his poachers instincts. Hopefully these 2 open play goals in 2 games will break the shackles for Latics number 10 and we’ll see more of these kind of goals. It was also nice to see Thelo grab an assist , and what a wonderful delivery it was too.
5) We win or we learn. But will we learn?
Leam was keen to stress that we never get too high after wins and never get too low after defeats, and that’s absolutely the right way to go. He also made it clear that there were things we need to learn from the defeat but without wanting to sound too cynical we’ve heard that before after similar defeats. Bad days at the office happen but I really think certain decisions left us with an uphill battle pre game and mid game, be that tactical, technical or personnel choices. It’ll be interesting to see if anyone gets dropped on Saturday, but like I’ve touched on already its not in Leam’s nature to make vast changes.
Talking Wigan 