Tesco triumphed over Harrods in a relatively low-key encounter at the DW Stadium. Maybe there was a touch of complacency on behalf of Sunderland, who may have expected an easy ride against a team still reeling from the events of last Sunday.

I’d prefer to say, however, that it was a marked improvement over the Spurs debacle which ensured all three points for the Latics to take them up to thirteenth in the table and put to rest some of the demons of ‘WhiteHartLaneGate’.

As the players took the pitch, a somewhat nervy home crowd were more hopeful than expectant. In stark contrast, a heavily juiced up Sunderland support were baying for Wigan blood to follow up their defeat of Arsenal the previous week.

It was Wigan that had the better of the first half, however, with decent chances falling to Paul Scharner and Jason Scotland. The teams went into the half time at nil apiece, a scoreline The Black Cats would have been slightly the happier with.

Sunderland came out fighting after the half time break, and things looked to be swinging in the visitors’ favour as Hugo Rodallega suffered what initially looked like quite a nasty knock. Scott Sinclair was readied to replace the Colombian, but Latics would not need him.

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Brucey returns to his old club

A bit of a pivotal game this weekend. It isn’t going to be the ‘be all and end all’ cup final match that’ll decide the fate of the club for the whole season, but it is pretty important in the circumstances.

There’s that old saying that if you’re in the relegation zone at Christmas you’ll be fighting to stay out of it come May, but that isn’t one that I necessarily subscribe to, and besides, there’s a whole month before the traditional mid-point reckoning.

The reason I cite this as a (kind of) crucial match is the events of last week. Should we emerge victorious, White Hart Lane shall be forgotten and we can all get on with our lives (at least until the next 9-1 drubbing, which hopefully won’t come within my lifetime).

I dread to think what’ll happen should Wigan lose. It’d probably mean a drop into the bottom three, which will bring out the inevitable moaners ranting on about how our manager isn’t up to the job and we should move back to Springfield Park and get more fixture cards in the club shop or whatever.

I shall ignore all that, though, because today I am going to steer away from the negatives and try to project some positive influence upon the club by way of talking up our chances. First up, the Premier League’s third top goalscorer, one Darren Bent, could well be ruled out with a hamstring injury.

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Popped down to Wigan at lunchtime for what I thought would be the grand opening of Latics’ new town centre shop with Martinez, Graeme Jones and Brenda Spencer, who’d be on hand to cut the ribbon. Over the weekend, I received an email via the club’s mailing list that our very own Titus Bramble would also be joining in the fun, taking on all comers at Nintendo Wii! I thought I would have a piece of that and give him a good whipping at FIFA 10… as Tottenham.

Well, Sky Sports News and North West Tonight were there, but not for the planned opening of WN1. Actually, they were at The Galleries for a certain other story. Somewhat unsurprisingly, the grand ceremony had been postponed as I’m sure poor Roberto and co. would have been crushed under the sheer weight of media presence after the event which must not be mentioned ever again.

The defeat was bad enough, but imagine the damage that could have been done had the Daily Mail and Beano Comic decided to park their vans in the market square – the Wigan public would have eaten them alive.

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Got any Scotch?

Remember on the old Saturday afternoon videprinter, whenever anyone scored more than six goals they used to spell it out in letters, as if to rub it in the faces of the losing team? Yeah, well, I’m glad they don’t uphold that custom anymore. Incidentally, I’ve done it in the title of this post, so if you’re a Wigan fan, don’t read it.

We’ve seen it so many times this season I really need not cite specific incidents. When Wigan go 2-0 down, it really could be any number against: we become so dejected and humiliated we stop caring and might as well be stood at the bar or playing Nintendo or something. Maybe we ought to have abandoned this afternoon as a bad project and conceded the game midway through the second half, because it really did become unnecessary torture.

The finger of blame naturally points at the defenders in situations such as this, and indeed Edman, Bramble and Boyce are mostly at fault for… well, at least seven goals. But we shall not dwell on that one too much, because for the really bad game the back four had it was more of a case of not being good enough. We really struggled to keep up with Lennon and Defoe for all ninety minutes, and were quite flattered by the half-time scoreline.

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