There will be around 1000 Wigan Athletic fans making the trip down to the Boleyn Ground to see if we can get that final win to confirm our place in the world’s Elite League.

The memory of beating Arsenal on Sunday still breathes strong for Latics fans; it was a reminder that this team is actually very good when it clicks. The problem for some is they could never see it clicking and even some of those have actually murmured a tiny bit of praise, they might even feel that the manager does know a bit about what he is doing, though of course won’t repeat it in public.

It seems a million weeks ago since we convincingly beat West Ham at the DW Stadium, the only part that was unbelievable was that it was only 1-0. We now see the Hammers lying three points above the relegation zone and four behind us, another win for us would see us mathematically safe and put Zola and his boys in a whole world of trouble.

Should Hull win as well, things would be very interesting and maybe, just maybe, the World Cup winners could get what they should have gracefully received two years ago. But anyway that is way in the future, we have to concentrate on basically not losing this game, preferably recording our first back to back wins of the season.

West Ham have lost 3 of their last 4 at home; to Bolton, Wolves and stoke, the only win was against a very unlucky Sunderland who had everything against them that day, mainly the referee. The Hammers are also on the back of being battered midweek 3-0 by Liverpool and apparently it could have been a lot more.

Zola will be having Scot Parker available for this game, let’s hope the big girls blouse shows a bit more balls for this game than what he did last season when he got Cattermole sent off for a fair challenge which had him rolling around like a little girl. Carlton Cole will probably be risked even though he was substituted in the game against Liverpool with a knock to his knee.

Martinez will have Gary Caldwell back after his red card suspension, but whether Steve Gohouri has done enough to keep his place only the gaffer will know. Kingston and Thomas are definitely not going to feature.

The game is really well poised as Wigan can feel that a lot of pressure has been lifted with us being 7 points from danger with three games to go, one of Hull City and Burnley would have to win all three games and or West Ham winning two out of the three (as long as they beat us). West Ham is under huge amounts of pressure, on the field they can’t buy a result (see what I did there), off the field they can’t buy, and therefore need to stay in the Prem to have a chance of recouping some of the losses.

I would love to see Alan Wiley referee this game with no bias to the home side, but I feel he will be giving everything he can to the Hammers. All we can do is relax and give it to them like we did against Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool – West Ham can only dream of ever being in the same league as these and we should be able to get into them early and let the crowd do the rest…

Come on Wigan let’s get our first win on London for 16 games…. have ‘em

This issue and many more are being disucussed on the message board, click here.

If you have a point of view, article, story, promotion or anything else publishing on Cockney Latic, send your details to us and we will get in touch. The email as usual is editor@cockneylatic.co.uk.

For all previous results between Wigan Athletic and West Ham United Click Here

Current League Positions

	Pld	W	D	L	F	A	GD	Pts	Pos
Wigan Athletic	35	9	8	18	33	66	-33	35	15th
West Ham United	35	7	10	18	41	60	-19	31	17th

Recent Record

Latics	W	D	L	F	A	GD
Last 8 Games	3	1	4	7	13	-6

 

Hammers	W	D	L	F	A	GD
Last 8 Games	1	1	6	6	17	-11

Foul Play

Latics

Hammers

Games 09/10	Yellow Cards	Red Cards	Games 09/10	Yellow Cards	Red Cards
39	61	2	39	64	3
Average	1.56	0.05	Average	1.64	0.08

This Weekend In History

Wigan games from this week in years gone by, click the scores for more:

	OPPONENTS	GROUND	RES	ATT.
02-03	Oldham Athletic	JJB Stadium	3-1	12,783
96-97	Wallsall	Springfield Park	2-0	2,725
85-86	Reading	Springfield Park	1-0	6,056
79-80	Wallsall	Springfield Park	3-0	7,720

Fixtures

Saturday 24th April 2010

Arsenal	v	Manchester City
Bolton Wanderers	v	Portsmouth
Hull City	v	Sunderland
Manchester United	v	Tottenham Hotspur
Wolverhampton Wanderers	v	Blackburn Rovers

Sunday 25th April 2010

Aston Villa	v	Birmingham City
Burnley	v	Liverpool
Chelsea	v	Stoke City
Everton	v	Fulham