Whilst the England cricket team were rolling back the years over at Headingley with a performance more reminiscent of 1995 than 2005, Latics fans had their own bout of nostalgia on Saturday as the Three Amigos were once again reunited at the club that made their names. Well, probably.

As Isidro Diaz, Jesus Seba and of course Roberto Martinez emerged from the tunnel to the strains of Fatboy Slim’s Praise You, it was as if they’d never been away. After a warm reception and brief photocall with Dave Whelan, Issy and Jesus stayed on to sign some autographs while Bob retreated to the dressing rooms to gee up the Latics players for his home managerial debut.

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There was a distinctly pre-season feel about this game: maybe it was the empty South and East Stands or the slightly below Premier League standard opposition that betrayed the match’s warmup status. But it was a game worth paying attention to for a number of reasons, not least the small but significant fact it was Roberto Martinez’s home managerial début.

There was a vociferous, if not rapturous, reception for Bob in his appearance as part of the reunited Three Amigos as an emotional pre-match presentation involving Bob, Issy, Jesus and Uncle Dave was met with warm applause. It was worth the five pounds entrance fee alone, and many would have been forgiven for forgetting there was actually a game about to take place.

Latics got off to a roaring start, hitting the post early on and causing the St. Mirren defence some real problems in the first half. A couple of tasty challenges involving Lee Cattermole got the crowd warmed up, and on 25 minutes, Jason Koumas capped a decent personal pre-season with a free kick slotted nicely into the top corner of Paul Gallacher’s goal.

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Is the cancellation of Almeria’s pre-season tour of Britain a sign of things to come? Will further fixtures, perhaps competitive, be postponed or even cancelled as the deadly disease takes a grip on the country?

Well, if you believe everything you read in the press, then yes, but I stopped taking tabloid filler as fact a long time ago. There’s a likelihood that the flu will bring some disruption to football (hopefully devastating the Arsenal squad the very week we are scheduled to play them), but let’s not be too negative about these things, eh?

At any rate, the upshot is that officials have lined up St. Mirren to fill the Spanish side’s place for the friendly on 8th of August. As far as I can gather, the game will go ahead as planned at the same time with the same ticket prices, only with new opposition. It will not, as Teletext page 517 still claims, be away to Motherwell – always check the official website for confirmation.

Well, at least we’ll still have a chance to see some Spanish style football at the DW this season under Bob Martinez. Of course, I suppose that ought to be ‘Big Bob’, in keeping with the long-standing British tradition of prefixing all managers’ first names with ‘Big’, but that’s a thought for another day.