Wigan Athletic set their stall out to play a tight game against their mega rich neighbours but once Carlos Tevez had lobbed Al-Habsi in the 42nd minute to give Manchester City the lead they ended up playing like rabbits caught in the headlights.
Latics boss Roberto Martinez made two changes from the side that drew with Sunderland, Franco Di Santo started up front in place of his fellow countryman Mauro Boselli and Charles N`Zogbia was brought back into the team for the unfortunate Ronnie Stam.
Latics started the game playing a defensive 4-5-1 with Di Santo getting little to no support up front as the home side looked more set on stopping their opponents from scoring than going in search of goals themselves.
The playing surface was very slippery following a deluge of rain in the past 24 hours and players from both sides had trouble keeping their feet, to be honest that was the peak of the entertainment in the first 40 minutes as neither side created anything of note.
With half-time fast approaching City keeper Joe Hart took a goal kick and slipped onto his backside that had the home supporters laughing though the laughter soon died away, from the punt up field Tevez found himself running clear of the Latics back line, with Al-Habsi rushing out the little Argentine coolly lobbed the Latics keeper from 20 yards to give the away side a half-time lead that they didn`t really deserve.
The second half started with the Latics looking very nervous and creating all sorts of problems for themselves with wayward passing and comical defending, time and time again putting themselves under pressure with passing along the back line instead of simply clearing their lines in the atrocious conditions.
With 20 minutes left on the clock Figueroa made a hash of a clearance, Tevez pounced, squared the ball to Yaya Toure who side footed into an empty net at the far post.
Steve Gohouri had Latics best chance of the game with a header that flashed inches wide with 10 minutes of the game left, so the run of three without defeat comes to an end and it`s back to the drawing board.
Confusing moment of the game, Victor Moses stripped and ready on the touch line for a full 9 minutes before coming on to replace Charles N`Zogbia, what was all that about?
Wigan Athletic
Al Habsi; Boyce (Stam, 65), Gohouri, Alcaraz, Figueroa; Thomas, Diame (Watson, 86); N’Zogbia (Moses, 86), McCarthy, Rodallega; Di Santo
Subs: Kirkland, S. Caldwell, Gomez, Boselli
Manchester City
Hart; Richards, K. Toure, Kompany, Zabaleta; Silva (A. Johnson, 72), Barry, Y. Toure (Jo, 74), De Jong, Milner; Tevez (Wright-Phillips, 88)
Subs: Given, Boyata, Vieira, Santa Cruz
Very frustrating and wet!
Disappointed to say the least
By wathcin MOTD2 you were appauling…Your defending was just shocking and your groundsman needs to take some tips of ours who i will mention has got the groundsman of the year award 3 years running i think now 🙂 Wigan are in big trouble this year lads, id put my money on you too get relegated.
P.AVFC did you go the match or are you litsening to the usual garb from MOTD.
When we won Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool last year according to match of the day we were lucky and the opposition woeful.
We are Wigan and no matter what we do in there eyes we will always be poor Wigan. I think it could be Villa a candidate for relegation this year.
To be fair Wigan looked fine in the first half, with honours pretty much even (aside from Tevez’s goal) In the second half they totally collapsed, but they’ll be fine if they can replicate theirr first half performance for 90 minutes. Strange team, as they were excellent against Tottenham. The pitch was terrible I must admit, although I guess in Wigan’s defence we did have nearly an inch of rain in 24 hours! Think much of Wigan’s season will be determined by whether or not they panic and sack Martinez prematurely – for every good performance you seem to have a mare, I reckon he’ll sort it out given enough time.
city deserved the 3 points as their forwards knew what to do with the ball.having said that if that freak first goal hadnt have come it could have been different.
wigginer well to anybody’s eyes you would be one of the favourites to get relegated, your squad is weak and only have a few decent players. You roll over nearly every week giving a few decent performances now and then but you certaintly are in trouble this year.
Our sqaud is much stronger than last season when we wernt relegated and we roll over every week…. u lost 6-0 to Newcastle!!
But where are we in the table? Where will we be come end of the season…Top 10 guaranteed, Wigan will be bottom 3 or scrape 2 sruvive relegation. Wolves, bolton, sunderland, blackburn, newcastle are all stronger this year…And it seems blackpool probably are, The league is much tougher and by looking at every team so far id have you odds on to get relegated.
I’d agree that we showed City too much respect, but I also thought we also looked scared. Players did not seem to want the ball from the back four, who passed it around looking for somewhere to put the thing. Nobody showed for the back four and I feel this made them frustrated and the mistakes came calling!
We lacked a player who could rally the team and force some semblance of attacking play.
Figueroa played like a lame horse wanting to be put out of his misery!
Hoping to see more of Boselli… And a goal at least from him.
Impressed with your site- a lot of members and contributions, so step up to the plate once more and join fans from every club across the country and participate in the following………….
A Challenge To ALL Vital Football Fans.
We need fans from every club to participate in The Greatest Poll- Who Will Finish Where. Pretty simple really…the poll is being conducted by Vital Wolves. We will run the poll for a week, tabulate predictions and release the results of our collaborative predictions.