Wigan's takeover, League One promotion and promising start to the season has dissolved into another relegation struggle, financial quagmire, player strike and points deduction - we spoke to Jimmy from the Mudhutter fanzine ahead of their 1-0 victory this Saturday.

How would you assess Wigan's season overall?

Has anyone ever written a book entitled “How not to run a football club in the Championship” I think we’ve been reading that. We’ve got everything possible wrong this year and the only saving grace has been the recent appointment of Shaun Maloney.

Wigan league results so far…
Wigan 0-0 Preston
Norwich 1-1 Wigan Aarons 62 — McClean 29
Wigan 1-1 Bristol City Keane 67 — Weimann 6
Birmingham 0-1 Wigan Broadhead 82
Wigan 1-5 Burnley Keane pen 43 — Rodriguez 17, Brownhill 27, 86, Tella 51, Bastien 88
Wigan 1-1 West Brom Magennis 6 — Grant 22
Luton 1-2 Wigan Morris 39 — Lockyer og 80, Aasgaard 88
Huddersfield 1-2 Wigan Lees 76 — Keane pen 25, Lang 82
Wigan 0-1 Reading Ince 63
Rotherham 0-2 Wigan Keane 12, Naylor 84
Hull 2-1 Wigan Pelkas 21, Estupinan 65 — Keane 14
Wigan 1-3 Cardiff Wyke 83 — Robinson 7, Ojo 65, Wintle 90
Wigan 1-0 Blackburn Broadhead 62
Sunderland 2-1 Wigan Embleton 54, Cirkin 72 — Wyke 44
Wigan 1-4 Boro Keane 34 — Jones 44, Watmore 51, Hackney 57, Akpom pen 69
QPR 2-1 Wigan Field 12, Balogun 24 — Broadhead 22
Wigan 0-1 Watford Pedro 87
Wigan 0-1 Stoke Tymon 62
Swansea 2-2 Wigan Manning 44, Piroe pen 84 — Keane 8 Naylor 16
Coventry 2-0 Wigan Hamer 77, Gyokeres 90
Wigan 2-1 Blackpool McClean 54, Tilt 88 - Madine 34
Millwall 1-1 Wigan Flemming 40 — Keane 33
Wigan 1-2 Sheff Utd Boradhead 65 — Egan 8, Sharp 54
Boro 4-1 Wigan Forss 26, Akpom 49, 59, 90 — Aasgaard 61
Wigan 1-4 Sunderland Keane 42 — Simms 19, Stewart pen 66, Roberts 85, Diallo 89
Wigan 1-4 Hull Broadhead 63 — Greaves 15, Estupinan 78, Smith 85, 90
Cardiff 1-1 Wigan O’Dowda 82 — Keane 90
Wigan 0-2 Luton Cornick 11, Adebayo 53
Blackburn 0-0 Wigan
Wigan 1-0 Huddersfield Whatmough 81
Bristol City 1-1 Wigan Atkinson 36 — Fletcher 65
Wigan 0-0 Norwich
Preston 2-1 Wigan Johnson pen 53, Cannon 57 — Cunningham og 27
Wigan 1-1 Birmingham Fletcher 59 — Bacuna 4
West Brom 1-0 Wigan Dike 27
Burnley 3-0 Wigan Tella 14, 47, Foster 76
Wigan 1-1 Coventry McFadzean og 83 — Gyokeres 53
Watford 1-1 Wigan Davis 45 — McClean 51

I actually thought Wigan played quite well at ours, and were very unlucky to lose, what's gone wrong since then?

We did play OK at yours, and should have come away with a point perhaps. The players are of limited ability and of an above average age but they were grafting away for Leam Richardson. This wasn’t good enough for many fans, who were complaining about hoofball and ultimately the board acted and sacked the man they named stand after, just a year later.

Leam Richardson looked a harsh sacking, how do you guys look back on that with hindsight?

It wasn’t my decision and a lot of fans were still behind him. We specialise in having a new manager slump, rather than a bounce, and things got a lot worse very quickly. Unfortunately, we have an entitled element who moaned their way through our title winning season last year and just carried on where they left off this time out, and ultimately the board acted. The football was very direct and grinding, but because he only got limited backing in the summer he obviously didn’t feel as though he could play a more attractive style with the resources he had. The one thing that has been apparent, where I would criticise him, is he signed a lot of League One players on big salaries, with low resale value. They did exceptionally well, got promoted at the first attempt and then received large pay increases and many of them just aren’t Championship standard. Even the ones who have been quality in the past are knocking on a bit and struggling to keep up with the pace, including a certain much-loved shy and quiet Irishman.

Kolo Toure, always a stupid idea?

Yes, indeed a somewhat bizarre appointment and if we thought things were bad under Richardson, they got a whole lot worse very quickly. One of the finest centre halves the Premier League has ever seen, who would have thought he would be utterly clueless at organising a defence? I mean the mistake was quickly rectified but during that period we went from the edge of relegation to rock bottom and several points adrift with a ludicrously negative goal difference.

What changes and improvements has Maloney made?

He has just fixed the basics. We have very little threat or pace going forward as there's none in the squad but he has tightened up the defence, and got us playing sensible possession football during periods where it is safe to do so. He is basically a proper football coach whereas I’m not sure Kolo Toure had the foggiest what to do. He has also spoken about wanting to be here for the long term, which suits me fine. He’s probably not the finished article, but the sort of chap who’s always learning and has a real desire to do so. We have to go backwards before we go forwards again but he will gradually replace the older heads, focus on youth and get a bit of stability back into the club, which is desperately needed after yet another year of turmoil.

What January business did you do?

Toure did a lot of the business before he departed, with mixed results. He brought in some young playboy from Arsenal, Miguel Azeez, who’d been on loan to a club in Ibiza. He looked OK but not sure he is Maloney’s cup of tea. One player who is everybody’s cup of tea is Christ Tiehi, and probably the one good thing Toure has done for the club. He’s from the Ivory Coast, he was playing in Slovakia and just looks a cut above in midfield. It would be great if he signed beyond the end of the season but I can’t see that happening somehow.

We also signed a few loanees, Danel Sinani from Norwich, and Omar Rekik from Arsenal along with Martin Kelly from West Brom. The latter looked outstanding on his debut, in our Monday night game at Blackburn, but true to form, the way our season has gone, he collapsed with a knee injury towards the end of the game and is now out for the season.

Summer Ins >>> Anthony Scully, 23, RW, Lincoln, Undisclosed >>> Matt Wonnacott, 18, GK, Torquay, Undisclosed >>> Ryan Nyambe, 24, RB, Blackburn, Free >>> Ashley Fletcher, 26, CF, Watford, Loan >>> Rarmarni Edmonds-Green, 23, CB, Huddersfield, Loan >>> Nathan Broadhead, 24, CF, Everton, Loan

Winter Outs >>> Graeme Shinnie, 31, DM, Aberdeen, Loan >>> Gwion Edwards, 29, RW, Ross County, Loan >>> Josh Stones, 19, CF, Ross County, Loan

Another points deduction, another ownership debacle, how has it come to this little more than a year after these guys rode in as saviours?

The chairman has been over this week to explain themselves to the EFL and the fans. They do seem genuinely embarrassed by it all. It sounds ridiculous but I don’t think they had any idea how much running a football club cost. They aren’t skint but by the same token they don’t have a few million quid lying around at the back of the couch. They are now seeking to make the club sustainable again and address the spiralling wage bill, and run the club within a much stricter budget. If they’d have done that in the first place, many of us wouldn’t have minded. As it stands, trust and confidence is going to take a while to return. All eyes are on next Thursday and Friday and finding out whether the next wages go through on time, and that will be a little box ticked in their favour in their path to redemption. And yes, I recognise the insanity of somehow being grateful that a football club owner has managed to pay his staff on time but that’s where we are.

Any hope of avoiding relegation?

Hope is a dangerous thing. Given all of the above, it feels that the rebuild will be a hell of a lot easier to perform in League One next year. I know your form has been somewhat abject since we last met, so I’d say we need to beat you on Saturday to stand any chance. Particularly as our next game after that is away at Sheffield United. We are notorious for great escapes, in fact Maloney played a key part in one of our biggest in 2012 when a doomed Wigan Athletic beat Man Utd, Liverpool, Arsenal and Newcastle within the space of a few weeks, so I would rule nothing out. We don’t even need that much improvement to start turning draws into wins and aside from the Blades, a lot of our games are against relegation rivals or mid-table teams winding down. We don’t score many goals though and we are just lacking in quality throughout. So, yes there’s hope but also a lot of acceptance that we are going down. We’ve got the right man in charge now but the damage has already been done before he arrived. We’ve shot ourselves so many times in the foot this year that we’ve run out of bullets.

Where does the club go from here, on and off the pitch?

Most likely, League One. Relegation clauses kick in, a load of out of contract players walk and ideally we’d pay off an ageing centre forward or two as well. We rebuild with a younger squad and have a blissful, stress free season in mid table. The wages get paid on time every month, the club infrastructure on and off the field improves and we can start to look to the future rather than living each day lurching from crisis to crisis. It’s possible to do a lot of this in the Championship of course, and we don’t want to wave the white flag but it will be a lot safer and cheaper to do it if we drop a level, as the wage drain is by far our biggest problem right now. Of course, there’s a risk we could tumble even further if we went down, but then it will be a lot harder to rebuild confidence in this division with even fewer resources to play with next year. It’s sad that I’ve put so much emphasis on the off field stuff but there’s fires burning all over the Championship right now, and I really think we’re better off out of it for the time being.

The new issue of Jimmy’s Mudhutter fanzine is on sale around the ground on Saturday.

Links >>> Official Website >>> Pie at Night - Podcast >>> Cockney Latic - Forum >>> Vital Wigan - blog and forum >>> Mudhutter — Contributor’s Fanzine

Twitter @Loftforwords, @MudHutter

Pictures — Action Images

Ian Randall Photography

nomar added 21:33 - Mar 30 “…there’s fires burning all over the Championship right now….” Probably the best summation of the current sad state of things that I’ve read. Not sure even you could have put that any better, Clive.
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francisbowles added 10:07 - Apr 1 Thanks Jimmy (and Clive) for an honest appraisal of your situation. Good luck for the future, after Saturday or at our expense.
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TacticalR added 14:32 - Apr 1 Thanks to Jimmy. It sounds like Mahoney has at least got the pumps manned, even if the ship is still sinking. I guess we are all wondering if we will be joining Wigan as they head down the plughole.
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TacticalR added 14:34 - Apr 1 That should have been Maloney instead of Mahoney.
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