See the resemblance? Nope? I'll crawl back to my hole...

Welcome back, Latic fanatics, for a whole new season of the Progress With Unity Podcast! Thankfully, the festive period has been salvaged by a win over Villa, so mass depression has been successfully avoided for the time being. In fact, the overall atmosphere in the PWU studio was one of cautious optimism, but perhaps that’s the New Year’s Vimto talking.

Plenty to talk about this week, from dodgy finances to player poaching and the bidding war to host the new Latics Academy in either mine or Paul’s garden. Believe it or not, there is also some football happening this weekend so we felt obliged to briefly mention such matters. Not that you’d be too interested in such drudgery…

Contents: Villa review (0:00); Manchester United review (08:30); Bournemouth preview (23:00); Farewell for now, Arouna! (38:29)

The next edition of the PWU Podcast will possibly include on-location elements, which are always great fun. Or they would be if we could actually win – current record for such editions stands at two games, two losses. One was after the dreaded penalty shoot-out, but don’t worry, there can’t be any on Saturday.

Can’t wait until the next edition? Follow the PWU Twitter account for more on Barry’s appearance in the Wigan Evening Post (possibly) and my appearance in Playboy Magazine (not really). There are also iTunes and RSS pages for you to follow, should you feel the urge of course. I am not here to tell you who and who not to subscribe to – have your own opinions and be an individual!

Winton pic courtesy Beacon Radio at Flickr (CC2.0)

Wipeout...

Manchester United may be the league leaders, but one statistic was in Wigan’s favour heading into today’s daunting encounter – United hadn’t won a single game in the calendar year, while Wigan hadn’t lost in the same time period. Oh alright, that was a stupid joke – I blame it on one too many New Year’s Ribenas watching Pointless Celebrities on iPlayer.

Speaking of drinks, viewing a series of highlights packages last weekend has inspired me to create this, the Ivan Ramis drinking game! You must take a swig of a different beverage for every pronunciation variation invented by commentators over the New Year period. Examples include: Eeevahhhn Raymos, Eyevon Rameez, Ivanhoe Rommis and Evan Rimmis. Watch Match of the Day tonight and see how many you can spot!

Enough festive frivolity – I’m sure all this irrelevance isn’t helping your hangover one bit, Rio Ferdinand (warning, replies may be NSFW!). Today marks the first day of a new transfer window, so although Wigan may have sat in a relatively healthy 16th position at 14:59pm this afternoon, it would be very unwise to become the slightest bit complacent.

As for whether our own new recruits, Roger ‘sign him up Bobby’ Espinoza and Chilean prospect Angelo Henriquez, will feature as early as this week, we shall all have to be patient (ahh, that’s my own New Year’s resolution). Arouna Kone is off to the African Cup of Nations, so let’s hope he accidentally leaves those shooting boots someone gifted him in the DW home dressing room for a potential successor to pick up.

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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.

Once again I joined the lads at PWU for a chat about all things Latics this past week. On the menu for this ninth edition: thoughts on that awful second half at Old Trafford, a returning Hugo Rodallega and MLS ‘superstar’ Hendry Thomas. Give it a listen to see what else we wittered on about…

Grab the RSS Feed here. I promise it’s more fun than a Paul Scholes tackle.