Another day at the office, another goal for Hugo Rodallega

We’d had our warmups in the form of Hartlepool, Preston and Swansea in the Carling Cup, but tonight saw Latics’ first midweek Premier League game of the 2010 season. It was a biggie, too, and no matter how much we tried to put it out of our minds (“bloomin’ great, another hammering,” mutter), it always loomed large on the horizon. I mean, it’s Liverpool, how could it not be huge?

Of the so-called ‘Big Four’, Liverpool is the team we’ve had most success against since our promotion to England’s top flight in 2005. More often than not, this matchup has yielded some intriguing and often exciting encounters – one need look no further than this time three years ago when the spectacular Amr Zaki almost propelled Wigan to new heights at Anfield. I wonder what happened to that bloke?

And of course, who could forget our win at the DW last season, a moment that will live long in any Latic’s memory? Hugo Rodallega might not be “a patch on” Harry Lyon, but he helped us beat the five-time European champions (not forgetting the small matter of a UEFA Cup), and that’s definitely something to be proud of. Maybe in ten years’ time we’ll be seeing websites dedicated to Rodders, no doubt with a plethora of Only Fools and Horses puns.

As expected, the visitors came at Latics from the word go, eager to gain the initiative. That they did on 7 minutes, courtesy the in-form Fernando ‘Nando’ Torres — his first away goal in the Prem for more than six months — from the edge of Al Habsi’s penalty area. I like this idea of naming players after restaurants, it adds the human element to some of these £100,000-a-week superheroesque figures we call footballers. Man, if I had £100,000 I could retire tomorrow – as long as I didn’t blow it on a Lambo or something first.

But never mind how much these guys are being paid, even if it’s somewhat relevant: I’d guess Liverpool’s player wage budget is far greater than that of Latics, to the extent Chris Kirkland has recently been reduced to begging for bus fares on Library Street. Well, it looked like him anyway…

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Photos from the build-up to this Premier League match. The floodlights at the DW mean night matches aren’t exactly great for getting decent photos, but the blur/glare wasn’t too bad on Monday evening.

Parting of the Red Sea: glum faces all round for the 'Pool

Let’s get this out of the way first of all – Liverpool were, by their standards, rubbish. Their passing was sloppy — amongst the worst I’ve seen at the DW this season, in fact — their finishing and will to win largely lacking.

That’s not to say the Reds didn’t have their fair share of chances last night. The only problem was they couldn’t hit the target, and may I say (in a rather biased fashion) that it was nice to see someone other than Wigan struggle to do so at the DW Stadium. Perhaps the biggest culprit of all was Fernando Torres, who, in his five opportunities, never even managed to challenge Chris Kirkland. Two of them, on another day, he may well have slotted away to help Liverpool bury little Wigan like they ought to have.

I say ‘ought to have’ in a partly ironic fashion, as on balance, you’d have never known which team were battling for a top four place and which were fighting against relegation. In truth, Latics were deserved winners and the more likely to score all night, even if Liverpool did have some similarly decent opportunities.

Right, that’s out of my system now. This particular match report will differ from 90% of those that adorn the front pages of tabloids and fansites nationwide in that it will actually focus on the Wigan perspective, and how wonderful it is to grab a crucial, crucial, crucial three points. In fact it was so important I decided to repeat the word ‘crucial’ a couple of times there.

As I sit here, the ‘analysts’ on TalkSport are picking apart the substandard Liverpool performance, but I shall completely ignore that, for it smacks of paint-by-numbers journalism ever so slightly. Also this is a Wigan blog, so I dunno what else you might have expected from a bunch of biased northerners.

Enough of the big boy butt kissing, already!

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So, I would write some sort of a pseudo-serious match preview with injuries and that here, but I’m gonna leave that up to the guys that know about this sort of thing to report with integrity and impartiality. Instead, I believe I shall have a bit of a blather about… well, not much.

The sun always shines at the DW

As a Wigan Athletic supporter, this weekend has been somewhat depressing for me. Not only am I suffering from the final throes of laryngitis, but just to rub it in we’ve had the town’s sunniest weekend of the year, throughout which I have been forced to watch other teams battling it out in both the league and FA Cup on the boob tube.

Yep, for some reason we’re scheduled to play on a Monday night this week. As I sit here goofing off, erm, I mean typing away on my keyboard, the sun is shining through the blinds and I’m once again forced to stay indoors. By the time 7PM rolls around, it’ll no doubt be minus 3 degrees as I make my way down to the DW for a game that should have been played in glorious sunshine on a Saturday. I like those days, they’re the ones I remember the most; the 3-1 victory over Reading that clinched top flight football; our first Premier League game against Chelsea; the time I missed McCulloch put us 1-0 up against Forest because I was down in the concourse getting a drink (which I had, like, three sips of)…

Well, maybe not all of Latics’ most memorable moments have been blessed with blazing sunshine on a weekend afternoon (Highbury 2006, anyone?), and I’m not saying the weather actually has much of a bearing on how much I enjoy a game, I just find it hard to get motivated for these incessant weekday evening matches.

No doubt today’s attendance will suffer as a result of its Monday scheduling, and the fact it’s on Sky TV doesn’t help much (actually, it’s on ESPN in case anyone’s interested).

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