Wigan have been tipped for relegation by many pundits again this season after a near miss last term, but this is a club with plenty going for it.
Had this fixture been played a week and a half ago I’ve no doubt this article would have taken on some gory comparison of the respective chairmen. Thankfully, we now seem to have our own version of Dave Whelen safely in place and doing all he can to reach out to the previously disenfranchised QPR supporters.
Whelen, a former player himself with Blackburn Rovers, made his fortune through the JJB Sports business which he founded. He has since spent it on his home town’s sporting clubs – primarily Wigan Athletic but for some time the Wigan Rugby League Club that dominates the sporting scene in this part of the world. It is because Wigan RL, dormant for years after dominating the sport through the 1980s and 1990s but recently revitalised under an inspirational Australian coach, have reached the Challenge Cup Final that we have been forced to play this game at a revised kick off time.
QPR’s previous administration agreed to the switch, despite the travelling faithful having long since booked expensive train tickets, and then put out statements professing to be from the only popular man left at the club Neil Warnock apologising and saying the only other option would have been a switch to Sunday or Friday night. No, the other option would have been to say no. Two weeks is no time at all to be giving notice for a fixture shift and QPR fans who paid £20 for return tickets two months ago now face a bill for £60 and more. I appreciate the situation where Wigan’s attendance would be affected, but as a League follower myself I can tell you it’s been pretty likely that Wigan would make that final this season from the very start of the season in February. It should have been switched when the fixtures were announced as a precaution. Rant over with.
My abiding memory of Dave Whelen comes from a radio programme broadcast from the JJB Stadium (as it was then) on the eve of their first Premiership match. Sky and the likes have long since lost interest in the Latics, no doubt seeing their low levels of support and therefore audience figures as a burden on their schedules, but at the time there was a tremendous amount of patronising coverage about “little old Wigan” in the Premiership.
Admittedly they were, and are, only there because Whelen wants them to be and was willing to first of all build a huge new stadium, secondly bankroll the team and thirdly maintain their £7m to £12m loss each year in the Premiership caused by their tiny attendances and top flight wage bill. But the patronising coverage of their early rise, and the now blissful ignorance of their strengths from pundits who write them off as ‘dead in the water’ before the start of each and every season left and leaves a sour taste in the mouth.
Anyway Mark Pougatch was chairing this live discussion from the JJB and was approaching it in much the same way Flavio Briatore approached this summer at QPR. One question after another along the lines of “oooh won’t it be exciting to have Man Utd and Wayne Rooney down here?” flowed fourth until Whelen could stand it no longer. Politely, but firmly, he told Pougatch he wasn’t really interested in Wayne Rooney and was actually looking forward to seeing his new signing Henri Camara in action. The Wigan fans in the audience leapt to their feet and applauded, and rightly bloody so. No doubt Whelen would have been as disgusted as we were had he been shown QPR’s promotional material this summer, which included adverts for tickets in the Evening Standard that sported pictures of Chelsea’s Fernando Torres.
Whelen is a man who understands the fans of his club and wants the same things as them – because he is a fan of Wigan himself. QPR fans will pay £20 for their seats at the DW Stadium this weekend, the cheapest in the Premiership by far – that’s mainly because they struggle to attract decent gates but also because Whelen is the polar opposite of Flavio Briatore.
The future for Wigan continues only as long as Whelen is alive and interested. Although the Latics can take heart from the length of time Blackburn survived and competed after Jack Walker’s death times are somewhat different now. Even Rovers have fallen into the hands of a gang of mental chicken farmers.
In the meantime survival in the Premiership is the prime aim every year, and they’re doing it with somewhat more style than the likes of Stoke.
We all knew that this was the worst scenario for us as traditionally the promoted teams do very well in their first few games and so although we should have won both opening games, we can’t be too downhearted at the draws gained from teams that are still high as a kite on adrenalin from the promotion.
As ever most pundits seem to be tipping Wigan as one of the strugglers. Do you see it like this? What are your ambitions for the season?
We will always be tipped as strugglers with the media because our novelty wore off five years ago, we are a burden to them now. As a football club we are used to being belittled and knocked down by ill-informed and lazy journos. I think we have the potential to do quite well this season if we can bring in a couple of faces and keep the rest of our squad intact.
What are the long term aims for the club? Is it simply a case of staying in the league each season or is there hope for bigger and better things in the future?
This is year three of Roberto Martinez’ plan, he said we needed to change the style of football we play and it would take two years to that, we now are expecting a more comfortable ride this season with an ultimate aim of seeing if we can claim one of those European spots sometime soon.
How galling has it been to see players like Antonio Valencia and Charles N'Zogbia leaving the club? Are Wigan a selling club? Who do you expect to attract interest this season?
Again, see the lazy journos part above. Wigan Athletic run at a £7 million - £12 million deficit every season, we have to sell to make sure we don’t end up doing a Leeds, Portsmouth etc. It is a fact of life that being a small, young club that we are we’ll not get the huge sponsorship deals or the ten matches a season on SKY that other clubs do, so we have to survive in other ways.
It would seem Wigan fans are very happy with their manager and chairman, which is somewhat different to most other clubs. Is this the case? Do Whelen and Martinez enjoy total support or are their dissenters?
There are always the ones that are never happy - the ones that think we should be in the mix for Champions League football every season, we should be signing Messi and have Mourinho at the helm. But in the most part, we are behind the manager, chairman and players.
Who are the star men? And tell us about an unsung hero or somebody we may not have heard too much about who is impressing.
The players that will play a big part in our season are James McCarthy, Hugo Rodallega and Victor Moses. These are bright young players that will have taken under their belts the experience gained last season and come out blazing this season. Ben Watson and Emmerson Boyce are the steady ones that nobody notices, but generally give 110%.
What is your perception of QPR as an outsider looking at our club?
It is a while since we played QPR and it will be nice to see you again this year, though with the prices rumoured to be charged at Loftus Road I doubt many Latics fans will make the trip. It sort of looked like the previous owners were in for a smash and grab (make as much money as possible from the only year in the league). History goes against the up coming teams and Warnock didn’t enjoy his last stint here, but I hope that whatever happens you have a good time.
Roberto Martinez has always been a little unconventional. A run of the mill lower league Spanish footballer as a younger man, he became part of an unlikely trio of imports from his homeland at lowly Wigan Athletic. The Wigan he Jesus Seba and Isidro Diaz joined back in 1995 was a very different proposition to the one he now manages - firmly placed in the bottom division, with a ground that included a grass bank in between the upper and lower terraces behind one of the goals that would turn into an entertaining mud slide once rain was added.
Seba and Diaz impressed briefly, but didn't settle and stay to the extent that Martinez did and continues to do – 16 years on and he's still here, now as a manager. After Wigan, where he made the thick end of 200 appearances, he joined Swansea during some of their darkest times when they were threatening to drop out of the league altogether. In 2003 he was the captain as the Swans avoided relegation to the Conference on the final day of the season placing him firmly in the hearts of a second unfashionable English club. Spells with Motherwell, Walsall and Chester were worked in there as well but it was his time with the Latics and Swans that defined him as a player in this country and his time in charge of both those clubs since has marked him out as a sought after managerial talent.
Through sound, ambitious management Swansea have made their way from bottom division to top – a path previously worn by Wigan thanks to the financing of Dave Whelen. The ascent in South Wales had already begun when Martinez returned as boss. Our old charge Kenny Jackett led them from fourth tier to third and consolidated them there, by the time Martinez replaced him the Swans had moved from the crusty old Vetch Field into the purpose built Liberty Stadium as well. The stage was set for Martinez to push them onto the next level and consolidate them in the Championship.
Not that the Swansea fans seem overly grateful for that. He was given a hot reception when he returned there with Wigan last week, their first home game in the Premiership. Comments that Martinez made after Swansea won League One at Gillingham, to the effect that he would stay as long as they wanted him and would have to be carried out of the place in a box if not, came back to haunt him because he forgot to add the clarifying "unless Wigan approach me" remark to it. He later confirmed that he wouldn't have left Swansea for anybody but Wigan , but the damage was done and the hard work he did while he was there is now often overlooked in the face of perceived betrayal.
Martinex's time at Swansea was no mere continuation of the work that Jackett had done. That trendsetting nature of his came to the fore to such an extent that it inspired our own Ian Holloway to abandon his on, previously much criticised, version of what LFW has come to term 'channel ball' in favour of the all out fluid attacking we saw from Blackpool last season. Holloway said he was inspired by Martinez 's Swansea side while he was out of work after his debacle at Leicester and it bore immediate results when he combined it with his own unique man management style.
Essentially the main difference between the traditional English style and the Martinez way is the 'out ball'. When no other options are on, and often as a first port of call for sides like Stoke, English teams tend to knock a long straight ball in behind the opposition defence with the intention of turning them round and winning throw ins and, if they're really lucky and Damien Delaney is playing, corners. The Swansea 'out ball' under Martinez went across the field, rather than down it, to a winger who the Spaniard insisted must stay tight to the touchline at all times. It made Swansea an incredibly wide team, and the previous English wisdom was that it would leave them open to attack – Holloway was always reluctant to pick Lee Cook and Gareth Ainsworth on opposite flanks you may recall. It worked though, and Nathan Dyer went from chavy nightclub thief to sought after Premiership winger because of it.
Martinez couldn't ask for more support from his chairman and fans at Wigan – even had they been relegated last season when it looked certain they would be Whelen insisted he would remain as the manager. But winning games in the Premiership regardless of style of play is always going to be tough at a club like Wigan – particularly as any impressive players they do bring into the team are quickly snaffled by bigger clubs.
Martinez was linked with Aston Villa this summer but, sensibly, wasn't interested. He spoke a lot about loyalty to Wigan around that time but then, as Swansea will tell you, he's done that once before.
One of the most intriguing things about this Wigan side for me is the increasing role Ben Watson is playing in it. Now for most QPR fans the mere mention of Watson's name will bring to the boil an anger that dates back to the end of his three month loan spell at Loftus Road when he made it quite blatantly obvious he couldn't have given less of a toss about playing for us. A defeat at Ipswich under Paul Hart where Watson was abused during the warm down by a QPR fan in hospitality lives long in the memory. We've seen that 'as long as I don't get injured' attitude from loan players before with Scott Sinclair and we don't very much care for it.
But Watson was at QPR at a very bad time. He was brought in initially by (or more than likely for) Jim Magilton who quickly placed him at the base of the midfield with Martin Rowlands in a system not a million miles away from the one we play no. The set up with Rangers playing from the back, with Watson and Rowlands fetching short passes from the defence, and then distributing it forwards to the likes of Routledge and Taarabt, initially worked like a dream. Rangers won 2-0 at Cardiff and smashed Derby (4-2), Reading (4-1), Preston (4-0) and Barnsley (5-2) in a memorable three week spell.
It was only when Magilton's head exploded and he was then ridiculously replaced by one of the worst managers ever to serve in the modern game, Paul Hart, that things started to go awry. Admitedly Watson's form was not helped by two quick fire sendings off in a defeat at Swansea and, farcically, in the win at Reading . Because of those reds and his form after Magilton left there are QPR fans who wouldn't want him within 30 miles of Loftus Road when in fact he's exactly the sort of player in exactly the sort of price range we should be looking at. Watch him thriving again with a manager who, like Magilton, insists on short accurate passing out from the back followed by swift involvement of skilled wide players. James McCarthy, a much sought after former Hamilton youngster, is also charged with keeping the ball ticking over and is one of a number of young Wigan players sure to be attracting interest from elsewhere.
It’s in those wide areas that Wigan’s best players have tended to reside and continue to do so. Charles N’Zogbia and Antonio Valencia have excelled here previously but with former Palace star Victor Moses now belatedly showing the form he always promised he would they could have another star on their hands. Throw in Jordi Gomez who was outstanding at Swansea, if a little prone to play acting, and Hugo Rodellaga and it’s clear that the majority of the threat to QPR will come down the flanks this Saturday. Rangers were weak in the full back areas to begin with but with Clint Hill suspended and Bradley Orr and Kieron Dyer now injured we are woefully short there and this is one of the worst possible games of the season for that to be the case. Pray for Patrick van Aarnholt, or somebody of that ilk, to arrive before the weekend.
Luckily there are clearly weaknesses to this Wigan team – hence them figuring so prominently in so many people’s thoughts when they are asked to predict a bottom three for this season. Up front Franco Di Santo is yet to start firing at this level either on loan at Blackburn or since Wigan paid £2m to bring him in from Chelsea last season. Connor Sammon came from Kilmarnock but Wigan only had to beat off competition from Scunthorpe to sign him and my thoughts on signing players from the SPL is well documented. On the opening day against Norwich it’s perhaps no surprise that Wigan dominated, looked dangerous, created countless chances and only got a draw for their troubles.
At the other end Emerson Boyce has just signed a contract extension and rated highly by the natives but rarely looked a Premiership player when he faced us for Luton and Palace. Goalkeeper Ali Al Habsi was voted their Player of the Year last season on loan from Bolton but rarely inspires me with confidence and has already cost them one goal and two points this season against Norwich.
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