Who needs Rooney when you have Berbatov?

Before today’s game, it had been precisely five years since Wigan’s last goal at Old Trafford. A Leighton Baines penalty on Boxing Day 2006 had no effect on that match’s final outcome, as Latics went on to lose the game 3-1. Still, it was the closest Wigan have ever come to tasting any sort of success in Salford. Actually, in their Premier League lives, Wigan have beaten Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool, but have never taken a single point from Manchester United. One would have thought our Mancunian cousins might have slipped up at least once in that time, but on each occasion, without fail, fortune has deserted Latics.

It transpired to be another difficult afternoon for Wigan, with a bit of bad defending and bad luck contributing to an on-song United’s often sublime football to ensure an expected defeat for Latics. It wasn’t entirely embarrassing, however – when one has lost 9-1 and 8-0 in recent seasons, 5-0 is almost nothing, especially when you’ve been reduced to ten men with over a half of football to play.

The hosts were initially happy for their opponents to keep the ball, as if to say “show us what you’ve got”. But any headway Latics might have made with one or two early charges forward were soon put into perspective with a rather soft 5th minute Ji-Sung Park goal. Well, at least that was the obligatory early goal against out of the way. Still shaken, the Wigan back line was being breached all too easily by Park, Giggs and Nani to name but a few. Alex Ferguson’s four pre-match changes seemed to have no negative effect on his side’s attacking threat, which Wigan would have to endure plenty of in the first twenty minutes.

The visitors had their best chance to date on 24 minutes via a free kick in dangerous territory, but it came to nothing as Gomez’s shot cannoned straight into the wall. Soon after, Victor Moses showed a little of what he can do by earning his side a corner, but this second set piece in the space of three minutes would also be successfully defended by the hosts.

Latics were finding some confidence going forward, Ronnie Stam in particular having a good time on the right hand side. His 30th minute ball across the face of goal could have yielded an equaliser, had Moses or Sammon been in the right position to slot it away. It wasn’t an isolated incident, either, as the Dutchman often found himself in the position to deliver a telling cross towards the back end of the half. Still no goals, however, and you felt they would be rather precious for the visitors this afternoon.

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Wayne Rooney: on target again

I swear I’ll never fully understand the mainstream media as long as I live. Prior to last week’s clash with Liverpool, every big time Charlie and rag tag red top was writing us off before a ball had been kicked. What happened? They ended up with egg on their faces as, by some fluke, Wigan managed to battle to a point. This time round, to cover their backs, they erred on the side of caution just in case we saw a repeat performance. They just can’t seem to find a balance, though; last week Latics were criminally underrated, whilst this time round we were vastly overrated.

Not that anybody at the club would have been in danger of becoming in any way complacent – this was Manchester United, after all, top o’ the shop and everyone’s tip for the Alex Ferguson Cup. Well, it ought to have his blasted name on it the number of times he’s had the thing in his living room. I can just see his wife on trophy presentation day shouting at the television, “no, don’t be rough with it! I spent three months polishing and waxing it!”

We, by contrast, are firm favourites for the drop because, of course, we’re Little Wigan with no fans and a poor manager. Yep, outside of Greater Manchester… nay, Wigan Borough, nay Springfield, nobody gives a fig. Whilst this is subjective and depends entirely on your viewpoint, looking at the foot of the table and our forthcoming fixtures I’m inclined to side with them. About relegation, mind, not those clichéd, stereotypical (mainstream media driven) views of Wigan Athletic.

Ordinarily, things would be looking up – another couple of wins from our next three games and it’ll all be fine and dandy again with Martinez the best thing to happen to the club since they reduced the price of half time pies (don’t bother with those, buy a zinger burger from the stand on the Pagefield Industrial Estate instead). The only problem is that the next two matches were Man United and Man City. A walk in the park you might say, but only if you were being flippant or blind drunk.

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That picture, as if you haven't seen it enough already

They say everyone has their fifteen minutes of fame. Unfortunately, in my case, it’s more slight notability, not for my rapidly deteriorating Wigan Athletic weblog, but as the creator of that Howard Webb image. You know, the one on all the back pages of today’s papers and all over the national newswires?

All I can say is thank you, Ryan Babel. The FA and Howard Webb may not be happy, but I’ve been walking around with a crazed grin on my face the whole day, garnering a fair few strange looks at work and on the bus. I could tell them why, but who would believe me? And why on earth would they care?

As some form of proof, click the above thumbnail for the full quality image resourced from my original Photoshop file. The reason I downscaled the picture (the low resolution jpeggedness is perhaps most evident in this enlargement), originally posted on my now-defunct Retro Yakking blog back in 2009, was for web optimisation but also to mask the fact it’s a pretty poor image edit. I knocked it up in half an hour or so, hence the obvious ‘shop quality.

Much like Babel himself, I owe an apology to Howard Webb. Also much like the Dutch international, the picture was created and posted in the heat of the (albeit rather extended) moment, in my case following Manchester United’s 5–2 defeat of Tottenham in April 2009. In the aftermath of a memorable game, I posted an article –tongue-in-cheek, of course– suggesting he might just have favoured the Red Devils just a little bit in his awarding of a generous, and highly important, penalty to the hosts. Check out this quote, which might well have been misattributed to Mr Webb:

Manchester United were never going to win without a twelfth man, so I took it upon myself to become an honorary Man U man for the evening. Can’t say I liked it much — mixing with the peasants was an unpleasant experience — but you have to do what you have to do.
– Retro Yakking, 26 April 2009. ©Blogdog, formerly Today.com

It was all in good humour. If you’re reading this, Mr Webb, please understand there are no hard feelings, just a cheekiness and eagerness to poke fun – the very ethic of Retro Yakking. The blog’s host went offline in the latter half of last year and with it went all my posts for the company, including the one containing the offending picture. However, it seems a bunch of Tottenham fans picked up on it the moment it was posted and spread the thing (abomination?) around the internet. When Mr Babel entered ‘Howard Webb Manchester United’ into Google Image Search, one of the first results would have been my poor Photoshop, which he promptly tweeted.

To be honest, until someone mentioned the incident at work I’d forgotten all about it. It isn’t one of my better image edits, slightly worse than, say, this:

Who ate all the pies?

So you can probably imagine how surprised I was to see the Webb image again. Anyhow, I bet you never expected a post such as this, eh? Breaks the monotony of the match reports blog this site has become, so enjoy it while it lasts.

Finally, I also feel I must apologise for playing a small part in Babel’s FA reprimand. But Ryan, I thank you for brightening my day, nay, week.

Dan ‘Harry Yack’ Farrimond

• Gallery of newspaper appearances, because I’m anal and egotisitical like that

Wayne Rooney: Back in action

If we’re being totally honest, this was pretty much always going to be a blank weekend for Latics, with next week’s trip to West Ham seeing the resumption of our season proper.

Except perhaps not. Perhaps Wigan could do the unthinkable and somehow come away from Old Trafford with something more than a Wayne Rooney gingerbread man (which was quite nice, by the way, and I don’t even like Mancunian shortbread). Perhaps pigs might be spotted boarding Concorde at Liverpool John Lennon airport. Maybe Lionel Messi would be seen at the DW Stadium negotiating a cut price contract involving a year’s supply of free Uncle Joe’s Mint Balls.

If we’re being serious (wot that?), today was as good a time as any for Latics to grind out their first point(s) at the Theatre of Broken Dreams, not least because normally Man United are absolutely powerhousing their way through all in their path. This hasn’t been the case in the last couple of months, even if losses at Old Trafford are still as rare as an Olivier Kapo shot on target as they’ve ever been.

Nevertheless, with Wigan on good form of late, there was always hope that the planets might align and Latics would scrape a flukey draw. For the first 30 minutes of the game, however, this was looking far from feasible, with United bossing possession and looking the more likely to score. As the end of the half drew near, though, Wigan started to get some passes going and created a few decent chances. You might even say we should have scored, and indeed a goal might have been more than useful in our seemingly futile quest to score an away win at Manchester United (dude).

In a similar vein to recent games, Latics began to find their feet towards the end of the first period, and somehow managed to avoid conceding to boot. Just when you felt things were going to plan, United grabbed one on the nick of half time, and it could well have been prevented. If Ali Al-Habsi had committed to claiming the ball, he probably would have been able to stop Evra’s header finding the back of the net. As it was, he was left in Half and Halfsville as lost as Steve Caldwell navigating Wigan town centre’s one way system.

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