Michael Brown returned to haunt his old club

A bad, nay, disastrous afternoon for the Latics at Fratton Park as our up and down season continues to both surprise and frustrate. If the Hull performance was bad, then today’s game was woeful, a million miles away from the team that beat Chelsea and even Burnley earlier this season.

The loss of Maynor Figueroa for the next couple of months is definitely a huge blow, and will no doubt lead to a rethink for next weekend’s fixture against Fulham.

For today’s game, an obvious replacement may have been Erik Edman, but Martinez instead chose to bring Sinclair into the left midfield position. Wigan’s makeshift left back, Charles N’Zogbia, did all he could under the circumstances, but asking a naturally forward-minded midfielder to play full back was, in truth, always doomed to failure.

It wasn’t just N’Zogbia’s fault, however. All of the Latics back line failed to deal with Portsmouth’s attacks, and indeed the whole squad had a day to forget. That’s not to take anything away from Portsmouth, who seemed as though they just wanted the game more, and finished the afternoon well deserving of their victory.

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Marlon King: Going down

Why is it that the only time Wigan ever get on the telly is when one of our players is convicted of actual bodily harm? Well, I say our player, as Marlon King was on loan at the time of the offense, but we were still paying his wages. Not any more, though, because he’s been handed his fourteen days notice.

According to Whelan, who I thought gave a rather good account of himself on Sky Sports News, “we don’t want players with eighteen month jail sentences”. Presumably seventeen would have been the threshold but one and a half years was just long enough to warrant a sacking in DW’s eyes.

Jollities aside, it’s something of a worry that King was our third-choice forward in the opening ten games of the season – he made a couple of substitute appearances but no real impact. In fact, King struggled to impose himself during his spell at the club with only a single penalty — which just about crept in — to his credit in 18 appearances.

If truth be known, Latics have been trying to offload King for quite a while now. He’s been an expensive burden, but perhaps we may be entitled to some sort of monetary compensation for his actions. Big Dave sounded pretty angry, and being the shrewd businessman he is, I would not be at all surprised if he pursued this claim.

On a personal level, there’s also the question of whether King will ever play professional football again. Had he been cleared of this offence, I am sure he would have been offloaded to Portsmouth or Wolves, maybe even a Championship side where he would have prospered.

As it is, the only football he’ll be playing for the next year and a half will be for Wormwood Scrubs FC. Still, if Mean Machine is anything to go by, then at least he’ll get the opportunity to hone his skills — footballing and otherwise — under the tutelage of Vinnie Jones.

Latics fans have the opportunity of attending our next three home games against Fulham (8th November), Sunderland (28th November) and Birmingham (5th December) for just thirty quid in the club’s 3 for 30 offer.

Now let’s look at the maths here. These category C games would normally cost £22 for an adult in the most expensive areas of the ground — that’s the middle of the West or East stands — totalling £66 for all three. If you take the club up on their offer before the Fulham game in just over a week’s time, you’ll be saving 50% and upwards on ticket prices.

Season ticket holders will also be able to bring a friend to one of the games for a measly one quid. Not bad eh?

More details.

It’s nice to see some of these offers popping back up again, but I can’t help feeling we’d sell out more games if we applied similar discounts to the bigger matches. I would love for there to be a sellout or two this season, but it seems highly unlikely unless Arsenal are really shooting for the title when they visit the DW on the 17th April.

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Up until today, I never had the opportunity to sample the delights of the Robin Park Sports Arena. Quite surprising really, considering it’s been there for ten years (?) and I walk past it every other weekend on the way to the DW. From a distance, you could get the impression it’s somewhat inhospitable, a pokey little shed in the back garden of the aforementioned Temple of Wigan Football (as nobody ever calls it).

Not a bit of it. Though some of the seats are starting to look a bit cracked and dated, which is to be expected from the years of use and abuse it’s no doubt been subjected to, it’s not a bad little stadium really. At £4.20 for a reserve tie, you can’t grumble too much.

Well, I did emphasise too in the previous sentence for a reason as there were no really big names like Jimmy Bullard on show here, but for me it was a chance to see the second string Latics squad in action for the first time this season. A helpful printout, provided for free in the reception area, informs me that Latics haven’t been too hot on the reserve circuit this campaign, limited to a paltry win and a draw from our first six league games.

This, however, was a Lancashire Senior Cup match, a potentially tough tie against a Rochdale side fresh from a 3-2 defeat of Carlisle and boasting an unbeaten record in this league campaign. Granted, these performances were against teams a couple of leagues below our level, but you can’t begrudge them their excellent start to 2009/10.

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