Pierrot tickles Columbine to death.
I added the pixellation, just in case you were wondering.

Good evening, podcasters! I hope you aren’t in too foul a mood following the events of Tuesday evening, and have enough energy to enjoy this week’s Progress With Unity. The FA Cup win is no doubt a sweetener, and the thing you will remember until the day you die. Once I recover from the disappointment of relegation (cough, and this virus), I am sure to be jubilant at the simple fact that Wigan Athletic won the FA Cup. I think that’s a point worth repeating a few thousand times.

This edition is a celebration of Saturday, which I have just about come to terms with. It is an emotional time as every man around the table recounts their memories of a day that will live forever. There’s a bit of coach ride banter, exclusive insight into the craziness of the Wembley press box when Latics scored, plus the infamous triangular corner flags myth and Ben Watson Mania! If you only listen to one edition of PWU this year, make it this one. And the one next week.

Contents: Arsenal review (0:00); Wembley (10:00); we did it for Joseph (12:08); coach antics (18:37); press box madness (25:30); more tales from the tour bus (32:00); meet and greet and Villa preview (39:26)

Get involved!

Progress With Unity is currently the only Wigan Athletic fan podcast on the web. If you would like to get involved or have any topics you’d like to be discussed please get in touch with Barry at wigan@vitalfootball.co.uk, marking your email PWU Podcast.

There is one more edition to come this season before we all take a well-deserved break. To be alerted when said episode is published, the PWU iTunes, RSS and app info pages are available as they have been all season. I should return for next week’s review of the campaign, which is sure to be a fun-filled 50 minutes reminiscing upon yet another gripping nine months in the Premier League.

As ever, thanks for listening and thanks for being yourself.

“Yo Death, my maaan! Shouldn’t you be at Aston Vill-aaaaagh!”

Not to be a party pooper, but I feel I must interject at this point. Remember a time long ago when we all cared about the league? Nah, me neither.

I don’t think I quite emphasised the importance of the Swansea game to Wigan’s Premier League survival. Hey, we all had other things on our minds last week so I suppose you could forgive a momentary lapse of concentration… or three. Don’t worry, I’m not going to bang on for 2,000 words about how the lack of Ramis and Alcaraz reduces the Wigan defence to a gibbering wreck, though to a certain extent I believe this to be true.

Instead, I shall speak at (moderate) length about this evening’s game and how Saturday afternoon affected it. Best get out your digestive biscuits and dunking beverage of choice for this one.

They say Wigan are the first team to win the FA Cup by accident, but I prefer to describe it as ‘everything falling into place’. The right draws, the right team selections, the right bit of luck here and there – three elements that have sadly been missing from Wigan’s league line-up at crucial points in the season. Antolin Alcaraz was supposed to miss the rest of the season, but he made a miraculous return to lead his team to FA Cup glory.

If Callum McManaman had been producing these kinds of performances in the first team from day one of the 2012-13 campaign, we might probably have been safe by January. And if Lionel Messi played for Wigan, we might have won the FA Cup. Oh, wait…

Screw the ifs, because barring a trip to the Large Hadron Collider, you can do precious little to change the past. Wigan had one more chance to fend off the Grim Reaper – if they could pull off an amazing win at Arsenal, that required points total of 41 would seem less of a pipe dream and a bit closer to reality. But the margin for error was negligible; quite simply, nought but perfection would suffice. Gulp.

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Decimated by man flu and fallout from (admittedly muted) Boxing Day celebrations, the Progress With Unity team crawl wearily back to the studio, aspirin in hand, for a bit of post-Xmas musing. Excuse the occasionally clipped, slurred speech as we frequently had to be revived with piping hot tea and whisky just to make it through the recording. Heck, I am surprised the evening yielded a whole 50 minutes of legible material!

The self-appointed ‘Terrible Trio’ blaze their way through a variety of topics from the Arsenal and Everton games to the forthcoming clashes with Villa and Man United. As an added bonus, in the spirit of seasonal specials, there is also a nostalgic look back at our favourite moments of 2012. Lads (and lasses), it’s been emotional.

Contents: Arsenal review (0:00); Everton review (12:38); Aston Villa preview (23:40); Man United preview (33:22); 2012 retrospective (40:48)

The PWU Podcast is recorded in front of a live studio audience of three thousand books and a copy of the Metro newspaper dated 15 December. Vaguely interested? See here for how to get involved.

Hey, have you heard about that Twitter thing? It’s really good, if you’re into that sort of thing. Progress With Unity has its own account for you to follow, plus some other multimedia gumph like an iTunes page and a dedicated RSS feed so you can download it to your iPad and listen to it at work. Don’t tell your boss, though, unless he is Jonathan Jackson or something.

In anticipation of the impending apocalypse, I gave away all my worldly possessions –yes, my clothes, my boots and my motorcycle– and went to sit on a large hill to watch the fireball barbecue us all. The Daily Mail, who published the above picture obtained from robots from the future, promised it would be more spectacular than the northern lights, so this was something I just could not miss.

For those still too afraid to open the curtains, I can tell you the much-hyped end of the world was something of a disappointment, to say the least. Not so much as an errant spark lit up the midnight sky, and I almost died of exposure thanks to the lack of an effective central heating system atop Winter Hill.

But never mind the disappointment that we are to go on living for the time being, because I did have the wherewithal to keep my Wigan Athletic season ticket. I shall not tell you where, seeing as I have no pockets to store it in (well, at least not in items of clothing…), but I did somehow gain entry to the DW Stadium wearing nothing but a cardboard Beko freezer storage box. It was an ‘early Boxing Day fancy dress costume’, I said to the man on the turnstiles. Thankfully, he never looked up from his copy of Heat Magazine as I warily shuffled past. Result!

News quickly filtered through that Wigan would have only two recognised defenders in the starting XI – a recipe for disaster, one would think. Jean Beausejour and Ronnie Stam could perhaps do a job as emergency backup defenders, but with Caldwell on the bench, surely it would have been tempting to simply bring him back?

Latics took to the field with an unusual defensive line-up – Figueroa, Boyce and just about anybody hanging around the back third. And you know what? It kind of worked. The expected nervy moments came and went, of course, but without an Arsenal goal to show for them. Quite how it was made to work, I’m not entirely sure, but that initial period of Arsenal pressure was successfully negotiated without too much alarm.

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