TyldesleyLatic

You stood to win £135,219.87p on a 14 match accumalator from a £2.75 stake yet 2 of your games were Villa/Burnley & Hull/West Ham?????
If that’s true, me & the missus need to change bookmakers

I don’t do the long accumulators (prefer to stick to 5 or 6 games where I win less but more often) but she won £2,500 on a 10 game accumulator last season on Bet Fred’s bonus section. If the only 2 you lost on were relatively low odds like those 2 games then you must either have had some real long shots in there, are talking bull or William Hill are very generous!!

“My point was that Bobby is in good company choosing this tactic”

The problem with that theory being that whereas Real Madrid & Liverpool have the players to be able to play that system successfully in their respective top flights, Wigan Athletic quite clearly don’t
Bobby should be able to see that and adjust his tactics/systems/whatever accordingly. At the moment he either can’t see that or he can, is too stubborn to change it & thinks if he gets them to play that way for long enough then they’ll turn into great players at some point
I asked after the Pompey game how many times does he have to stick his hand in a fire before he realises it burns – I’d like to add this week that you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear

“If people choose to be so negative then so be it”

In the last 3 games, Latics have conceded 15 & scored 2. The only positive spin you can possibly put on any of those 3 performances is that we probably should have beaten Fulham. Then again when Fulham went defensive & tried to close the game out, what did our manager do?? Put our most potent attacking threat to left back & left Scotland up front on his jack jones

As for this “on our day we are a good side” guff – I remember in our first season in the top flight West Brom beating Arsenal. They still got relegated. Other sides have got one off “freak” results against the “bigger” clubs and still got relegated too

“The result was a freak and I an sure we will see the real Wigan on Saturday!” – Was the 4-1 spanking from Blackpool a freak too?? What about the 2nd half capitulation to United? The drubbing from Arsenal? The battering off Pompey (a truly awful side)? Losing to Hull despite having 76% of the possession? Getting pulled all over the shop by Wolves for long stretches of the game?
The fact is that at the moment the freak results look like the Chelsea & Aston Villa victories. IMO we’ve played well in 5 out of 14 league & cup games. Martinez has turned one of the best defensive units outside of the top 4 to the worst in the division in just over 3 months

“Someone commented about saying when we went 2 nil down it was about not losing players I’m sure he mentioned that after the fourth” – You’re right. I’ve seen a fuller interview than where I originally saw it (teletext) & he mentions it after the 4th. I think it hit a nerve when i originally saw the quote as it followed on from Melchiot after the Pompey game when he said that after going 2-0 down there is nothing the manager can do to turn things around

“Burnley game aside, the way that we completely buckle after concedeing a goal is diabolical. That shows a complete lack of fighting spirit and that is terrifying”

A belief completely & totally vindicated by the fact that in his post match comments, our manager seems to indicate that after going 2-0 down the game became all about players not getting yellow cards & suspensions for the Sunderland game
Now I’ve only read the interview/quote rather than hearing it first hand & in its true context but that for me is a shocking attitude & admission for a manager to make & admit to
Latics have been in the top flight for 4 & a third seasons & yet have taken virtually all of our biggest tonkings in that third of a season alone

“You don’t go making wholesale changes 3 quarters of a way through a game. Christ’s sake!”

No offence but that is complete & total $h!te – plenty of managers will make wholesale changes 3 quarters of a way through a game if they want to change the course of the game. Some times its successful & some times it isn’t. I’d much rather see someone who has the ability to think his way out of a stalemate or a poor situation than someone who merely holds his hands in the air & says there’s nowt more he can do.

“Oh, I know, let’s totally change the formation, and let’s move a centre half who is right footed to Left back, and a midfielder to centre defence…and so on”
For a start I wasn’t proposing moving a right footed centre half to left back. I was proposing moving a right footed centre half to right back as he’s more than capable of playing there. Who I was proposing to move to left back was our right back. Now I know that in your vast experience of the South Lancs Counties or whatever league you say its nigh on impossible for a right back to play at left back but its been done by plenty of right footed players – not least very successfully by Man United’s best left back of the Fergie era – Denis Irwin
As for moving a midfielder to centre half – Paul Scharner is not a premiership quality midfielder in the memory of man & that won’t change no matter how many times he tells people that he is.

The whole point of having a plan A is that you have a plan B if things don’t work. Martinez doesn’t seem to have that – yet

“and in the process totally disrupted the rest of the team”

So basically we can play 4-5-1 & that’s it yeah??? So if it aint working & the opposition are well on top our only option is a battering in a Pompey styley??
Or if we’re chasing a game or need a spark from somewhere to change a draw into a win its tough titty coz we can only play one way.

Bobby knew Edman had only played one senior game in the best part of 18 months & that he’d get knackered towards the end. Its up to him to have some sort of contingency plan. If the only alternative he could come up with was same formation, but N’Zogbia at the back & Sinclair on the right (coz it worked so well against Portsmouth) then you have to ask whether he has the tactical ability to think his way out of certain situations.

The solution I said wasn’t ideal but offered us somet different & could have been worked on during the week, as could the other formational changes people have put forward – and as a result any disruption would have been minimal

As it was, his only change was to weaken the attacking options in a game where we should have been pushing on to win.
I’d rather see my team push on to try & win games where they’re in the ascendency, not settle for a point
I want Bobby to succeed & I like the way he’d prefer his team to retain possession if there is nowt on rather than aimlessly lumping it forward BUT likewise I’m disappointed that its 4-5-1 (regardless of who we’re playing) or nowt, I also think there are also times when they’re under pressure that a back 4 really do just need to smack it as far away as possible coz trying to get a back four who aren’t good enough footballers (when up against some of the world’s best forwards) to play their way out of trouble has cost us too many goals already this season and I’m worried he has turned one of the best defensive outfits in the division into one of the worst within 3 months

I don’t think it was the only option at all

Edman could have gone off, Melchiot could have swapped to left back, Boyce could have moved to right back, Scharner could have dropped to centre half, formation could have changed to 4-4-2, N’Zogbia could have switched to left wing, Sinclair could have gone on the right wing & Rodallega could have moved up front

The back 4 wouldn’t have been ideal like that but IMO it would have been a far better option than moving our most potent attacking player on the day to left back & leaving Scotland up front on his todd.

Bobby seems happy to accept a point when we should have pushed on & tried to get all 3 there. Similar to the City game when they went down to 10 men & he didn’t go for the jugular. Don’t think its a trait he’s just developed either coz there are alot of Swansea fans who believe they drew far more games than they should have last season & that ultimately cost em a play off spot