As the rain poured down on Roberto Martinez and his fallen troops at the Emirates, the pathetic fallacy perfectly summed up the mood. We have inflicted these emotions directly onto other clubs in recent years, we’ve seen Sheffield United, West Ham and Blackburn perish as we have simultaneously celebrated, but now it’s our turn to feel the pain of relegation.

Last Tuesday, the DW Stadium resembled a cauldron of despondency. Wigan players and fans alike had their energy zapped out of them and left the stadium in sheer disbelief, knowing that it could be the night survival finally slipped from our grasp. This was a fairly atypical event to precede a Cup Final, but the Latics put league troubles behind them to rise from the ashes on Saturday at Wembley.

The common perception of Wigan Athletic is a club that has grown rapidly over the last decade but has now fully expended all of its modest resources and cannot grow any further. Many consider Latics to be unsustainably punching above their weight, with it only being a matter of time before the luck runs out and Wigan fall back from whence they came. Roberto Martinez however has other ideas, and the next few weeks will determine whether his dream will have potential, or will be nothing more than an ambitious concept of unrealistic idealism.

BBC North West Tonight will be broadcasting live from Berkley Square ahead of the FA Cup Final on Saturday.

As history has taught us, when we reach April and survival is still to be earned, you cannot pick and choose fixtures that you think you can win and write off the others. At this stage, every game should be treated as a must win scenario.

The FA Cup run has been a fantastic journey and a great bonus for the club, but it’s a possibility it could act as a disguise -or even an excuse- for league failure. If Wigan go down, the season will be regarded a failure irrespective of any Cup exploits or European qualification.

Wigan Athletic’s return to Wembley was an inevitably massive day for the club, even if we failed to sell out our allocation. Although our victory has been overshadowed by a mindless act of hooliganism, let’s not allow anyone to forget the fact that this was our day, which cannot be taken away by a group of thugs, and what a day it was.