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.

Read the rest of this entry »