There shall be no stupid teletext quiz this week. No longer shall I fiddle while Robin Park burns, because I live in fear, dear reader.
For the second time in six months, I’m going to break the statistician’s code and cite the most tooth-grindingly awful season of my Latics supporting lifetime. This week in 2015, Wigan defeated Norwich 1–0 at Carrow Road – a rare chunk of choc in the barren Rich Tea wasteland of senseless draws and buttock-beating heavy losses. Yeah, it’s alright if you forgot about that game, because I did too.
The goal scorer that day was Kim Bo-kyung, yet another ‘one season wonder’ that passed through the DW Stadium’s fast-revolving turnstile of ill fate. Yet another moderately competent footballer wheedled out by the criminally unwinnable ring toss game that was Wigan Athletic Football Club.
The glorified game of quoits continues to this very day, only now it takes place on a conveyor belt so fast not even Omar Bogle could keep his footing. Wigan’s squad list has been scrunched up and rewritten so many times they switched from pen to pencil. And even then it was erased so many times the weakened paper simply ripped clean in half.
Shamed as I am to admit it, I do find myself asking exactly who the ‘new’ man on the wing might be. Is that Ryan Tunnicliffe or Jamie Hanson? Or did Michael Jacobs get a new haircut? Small time internet webloggers are forced to actually do some research and Google Image Search exactly who the latest hired hands might be. Goodness knows what the casual supporter ‘dipping in for a quick look’ might think before he trundles off for his train at 8:54pm.
These issues are symptomatic of a constant search for answers. That’s not to say the club’s primary tool in times of crisis is an Internet search engine or indeed the latest football management video game… unlike a certain blogger.
Because when something doesn’t work, you try something else. But this runs contrary to the model for a settled squad, which requires time… you do not have. And herein lies the modern footballing paradox.
In the current climate of constant change, one has to wonder whether a successful manager is actually any good or just a jammy so-and-so.
In the end, dear reader, you can only have conviction in your choices and trust fate – certain things you simply cannot control.
