"No moles here, Gaffer, only rugby divots..."

Going into today’s game, much was made of Everton’s seven game unbeaten run. In the (somewhat subdued) build up,  I will admit I was drawn into the depths of the doom and gloom brigade – after soaking up a massive blow in losing to Blackburn midweek, surely Latics would be too punch drunk to even put one foot in front of the other, especially after drawing with lowly Notts County just last Saturday.

Well, at least someone wanted Latics to win today: dare I say it, the Man Upstairs. By which I mean the wizard that resides in the sky and loves to play with the emotions of billions of people – the bloke some people call the Football God.

It seemed much of the luck that had deserted us in late December returned in abundance as The Toffees somehow managed to go a whole 84 minutes without scoring, despite the best efforts of the likes of Saha, Cahill, Fellaini (you know, the dude with the sweet ‘fro, maaan) and the moles that live beneath the DW surface. I dunno how they got there, they must have moved in when the undersoil heating broke down earlier this month… actually, I think we’ve just found our prime culprit.

Even the officials seemed to be on Latics’ side as, midway through the second half, the ball was bundled over Stojkovic’s goal line only for the linesman stood in front of the East Stand to give us a reprieve – offside, or a foul, or something.

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Ex-Latic Jason Roberts made a cameo appearance from the bench to close out the game for Rovers.

A tough away day for the Latics saw them edged out, in the end, by two goals to one. In all fairness, though this was one of those games that could have been a vital away point, Blackburn simply had the better of a game that seemed to play out in phases.

For all the commentators’ praise of Blackburn’s bustling first half performance, things were pretty even going into the half time break. If it weren’t for a momentary brainfreeze by league débutante Vladimir Stojkovic and a well-placed strike from Pedersen, it could so easily have been 0-0 on 45, but on balance I think 1-1 would have been more of a fair score.

Both sides had decent chances, Rodallega forcing a second-minute save from Robinson and Blackburn hitting the post in the first fifteen minutes. Things continued in much the same vein, with Wigan having the most shots but, crucially, not that many challenging the Blackburn keeper.

They finally did so on 56 minutes, Caldwell bagging his first goal for the Latics with a header slotted past Robinson’s left hand. And they looked to be on the up — a renewed vigour saw them pressure the opposition goal, but not for long. Rovers found their feet again and soon grabbed a deserved goal that put them 2-1 up with less than fifteen minutes to play. Kalinic found some space from a corner and found the back of the net in a rather similar fashion to Caldwell twenty minutes earlier.

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Antonio Amaya: have we seen the last of him?

Somehow, Latics are still in this season’s FA Cup, despite the best efforts of one of the most pedestrian first half Latics sides to grace the pitch this season, certainly in 2010.

I dunno about Notts County 2-2 Wigan Athletic, you might say Tim Gudgeon should have read Antonio Amaya 2-2 Wigan, because from a Latics point of view his, shall we say, slightly iffy performance all but gifted County with two goals. Well, maybe I do the Nottinghamshire side a disservice: those goals still needed sticking away, and the second in particular — a cracking free kick even David Beckham would have been proud of from Ben Davies — left Stojkovic with no chance.

In fact, Notts County punched well above their weight today, albeit against a first-half Latics side that weren’t even at the races. But a below average turn out from the Spanish centre back left fans wondering whether they would ever see him in a Wigan shirt again. Sure, there was undeniably a collective failure to repel the spirited efforts of a club in the midsts of financial insecurity — which this tie, of course, will go some way to easing — but a man with an ulterior motive would single out Amaya for toilet duties first thing on Monday morning.

Or, at least another lengthy spell in the reserves. Not that I would make the guy a scapegoat for any of Latics’ failings, with Gohouri and Caldwell waiting in the wings, you get the feeling old Antonio’s days as a first team player could well be numbered, at least for this season.

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James McCarthy grabbed his first league goal for the Latics

With all the postponements and cancellations in the past couple of weeks you’d have been forgiven for thinking the season had ended prematurely, you know, to give people a chance to recover from their New Year hangover. It’s been a full seventeen days since the Latics last played a Premier League match – I wonder if that counts as one of those winter breaks the media have been blathering on about for a while?

If Wolves out-muscled Wigan in their previous encounter, then on balance the (snow?) boot was well and truly on the other foot this afternoon. It didn’t always seem like ending up that way, though: Wanderers looked busy in the first part of the game, and Sylvan Ebanks-Blake went agonisingly close early on when it actually looked easier to score. Latics began to look a bit scrappy at the back and gave the ball away quite a lot, debutant Gary Caldwell having quite a bit of work marshalling his fellow defenders in the second third of the first period.

Wigan slowly edged into the ascendency, however, with Hugo Rodallega coming close on more that one occasion. In fact, it was a mini-miracle the match had remained 0-0 up until the 45 minute mark, with both teams having good opportunities to find the onion bag. But then, with but seconds remaining in the first half and just as fans were setting off for their half-time pies, Latics were handed a chance to get on the scoresheet when a momentary brainfreeze from Richard Stearman saw him tangle clumsily with James McCarthy in the Wigan penalty area.

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