It has been 7 years since we played Blackpool in the League and overall we have a very decent league record against our visitors. Roberto Martinez though, will want his new look Wigan Athletic team make this opening game of the 2010/2011 season against the new boys a winning one.

In 2003 we fought out a 1-1 draw at the JJB Stadium as we went on to stroll out of the Second Division with 100 points. Our earlier encounter at Bloomfield Road resulted in a 2-0 win to Latics and something similar on Saturday will be a great start our season.

Latics will be fielding a relatively new look team, with the departure of Titus Bramble the defence will certainly be different. The midfield is now oozing with good young talent all of which have featured in the preseason games and it will be interesting to see what Roberto thinks is his strongest side.

Blackpool have been very quiet in the transfer market until the last couple of days, but for whatever reason Ian Holloway seems to think the team that scraped through the play offs last season is the one that can compete best in the Premier League.

The bookies have us evens to win (Betfair and 188BET follow the ads on site to register and get bonuses), Blackpool are 4/1. They also have Blackpool odds on favourites to return from where they came at ¼, but as we have had that honour in the past we shouldn’t take it as granted.

Latics need to get off to a good start; really difficult games follow against Chelsea and Spurs so a good performance with three points would be superb. For what it is worth, we have only ever lost one home league game against the Tangerines in the past and we should have too much for them this time.

Latics fans will be looking to Alcaraz, Figueroa, Moses, McCarthy, Diame, Rodallega, N’Zogbia, Boselli and co. to show us what they can do, more so we want to see our manager’s systems work and with these players we could have a good chance.

Roberto takes no notice of the media speculation and so will not be bothered by the putting down again of his talents; Saturday will hopefully see some credit being given and it to be pointed at Latics manager.

Head To Head League

	W	D	L	F	A
Home	7	4	1	24	9
Away	4	4	4	14	17
Total	11	8	5	38	26

For all previous results between Wigan Athletic and Blackpool Click Here

Fixtures

Saturday 14th August 2010

Tottenham Hotspur	v	Manchester City
Aston Villa	v	West Ham United
Blackburn Rovers	v	Everton
Bolton Wanderers	v	Fulham
Sunderland	v	Birmingham City
Wolverhampton Wanderers	v	Stoke City
Chelsea	v	West Brom